Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You
by
Sam Gosling*
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Amazon Description:
Does what’s on your desk reveal what’s on your mind? Do those pictures on your walls tell true tales about you? And is your favorite outfit about to give you away? For the last ten years psychologist Sam Gosling has been studying how people project (and protect) their inner selves. By exploring our private worlds (desks, bedrooms, even our clothes and our cars), he shows not only how we showcase our personalities in unexpected-and unplanned-ways, but also how we create personality in the first place, communicate it others, and interpret the world around us. Gosling, one of the field’s most innovative researchers, dispatches teams of scientific snoops to poke around dorm rooms and offices, to see what can be learned about people simply from looking at their stuff. What he has discovered is astonishing: when it comes to the most essential components of our personalities-from friendliness to flexibility-the things we own and the way we arrange them often say more about us than even our most intimate conversations. If you know what to look for, you can figure out how reliable a new boyfriend is by peeking into his medicine cabinet or whether an employee is committed to her job by analyzing her cubicle. Bottom line: The insights we gain can boost our understanding of ourselves and sharpen our perceptions of others. Packed with original research and fascinating stories, Snoop is a captivating guidebook to our not-so-secret lives.
Added on: Tuesday, June 24 2008
Recent Reviews:
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Recent Quotes:
sam gosling
I have met this author professionally. He is a brilliant behavioral psychologist at the University of Texas who has done a lot of breakthrough studies about personality, and relevant to this book, about how our home and office environments offer clues to our personality and character.
I love this book. But I must admit I am not objective. I run an architecture firm, and we use a process called the Truehome Workshop to design homes that fit the lives, values, personal goals, emotional and spiritual needs of our clients.
Sam Gosling heard about what we are doing, interviewed me and a number of my clients, and the Truehome Workshop ended up being most of what the last chapter of Snoop is about.
So we are very honored. Despite my obvious conflict of interest, I think I am objective enough to review this book, simply because I have a lot of expertise in this area.
We have been using a process in our architecture firm for almost a decade that allows us to tailor homes very exactly to our clients needs, including reducing stress, enhancing relationship and other benefits that are not available from traditional architecture.
In fact, we are able to create real “healing homes” and have done so for a long time now. We are two years into building a web-based software that can do the same thing online…so I know something about the subject area that is dicussed in Snoop.
First, the guy is funny. This is one of those rare popular science - self improvement books that is a fast read, interesting and informative, funny - but doesn't sell out the science.
Snoop is a great book. Check it out!