Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You (Hardcover)

~ (Author)
Key Phrases: impression management, feeling regulators, behavioral residue, Big Five, Less Than Zero Acquaintance, Space Doctoring (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From The Washington Post

Reviewed by Jay Dixit

In 1942, as the United States was entering World War II, the Office of Strategic Services -- the precursor to today's CIA -- was scrambling to find promising spies to go behind enemy lines. One of the aptitude exams it developed was the Belongings Test, in which candidates had to draw conclusions about a man based purely on items in his bedroom: clothes, a timetable, a ticket receipt.

Sam Gosling, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, has made a career of studying how such clues illuminate personality. His premise is that our personalities seep out in everything we do and that expert snoopers can draw remarkably accurate pictures of us by examining the traces we leave behind.

Gosling's conclusions are supported by rigorous academic research, but his engaging book is aimed at a popular audience; he presents it as a field guide to the "special brand of voyeurism" he calls "snoopology." Few readers may actually rummage through their neighbors' garbage in search of what Gosling dryly calls "behavioral residue," but Snoop's conceit makes for an entertaining tour of how people project their inner selves outward into the world.

Some clues come from explicit, deliberate identity claims, like the Malcolm X poster on your wall or the crucifix over your bed. Others, like the songs you download or the coffee cup you throw away, are what psychologists call "seepage," messages that leak out beneath your notice.

The trick to decoding a person's space is knowing what to look for. Offices with plants, knick-knacks and symbols of friends, family and pets tend to belong to women; men display more sports items and symbols of their achievements. Rock fans are less friendly, more artistic and more anxious than fans of religious music. Extroverts offer comfortable chairs and bowls of candy as "bait" to lure people into their offices, while difficult people wind up on the remote fringes of the workplace.

This may seem like just common sense, but it's not. We think people with messy, disorganized bedrooms will be unpleasant, but we're wrong. We incorrectly assume people whose rooms are highly decorated and cluttered are more extroverted. We make similar errors in judging people directly: We expect timid, grumpy-looking people with weak voices and halting speech to be anxious and easily upset, and we expect self-assured, smiling, stylish people to be open, imaginative and curious. But neither expectation is accurate.

On a date or job interview, you may succeed in presenting a misleading impression of yourself. But since the gradual accumulation of clues in your living space is hard to fake, snooping can yield a penetrating portrait. And that, says Gosling, is perfectly okay, because though we try to put our best selves forward, most of us, in the end, want to be known not for who we wish we could be, but for who we are.

Of course, one of the main ways we carve out our identity is by consuming. We surround ourselves with things that reinforce our conception of who we are, purchasing not just the objects we need but also symbols that help us articulate our personal narratives. That's why Ramones T-shirts outsell Ramones albums 10 to one and why, Rob Walker asserts, 75 percent of Viking's ultra-high-end kitchen ranges are never used.

In Buying In, Walker, who writes a consumer behavior column for the New York Times Magazine, makes a startling claim: Far from being immune to advertising, as many people think, American consumers are increasingly active participants in the marketing process. True, we've grown skeptical of traditional advertising, the clumsy, crass kind in which someone on Madison Avenue thinks up a soft-drink jingle and broadcasts it into ubiquity. And it's true that TiVo and the Internet have given us more control over the advertisements we see.

But Walker leads readers through a series of lucid case studies to demonstrate that, in many cases, consumers actively participate in infusing a brand with meaning. Consider the iconic mouthless cat known as Hello Kitty, used for marketing clothes, toys and bandages by the Japanese company Sanrio. She has no personality because the company painstakingly avoids defining her character, Walker says. The key to the mega-brand's success, he suggests, is ensuring that Hello Kitty remains an ambiguous symbol, a blank slate on which buyers can inscribe whatever meaning they want, from nostalgia to camp to subversiveness.

For the same reason, the makers of Red Bull never claim anything specific about the highly caffeinated drink's special ingredient, taurine, or which powers of athleticism, mental acuity or virility it supposedly bestows. They prefer marketing campaigns that promote the brand's "personality" by sponsoring such extreme sporting events as kiteboarding to Cuba, kayaking over waterfalls and street luge.

Or consider how the Pabst Blue Ribbon brand was hijacked by young, anti-corporate types. PBR's fan base grew not from aggressive marketing, Walker says, but from the lack of it. Long neglected, PBR had virtually no image at all, which helped make it an underground darling among people who attached a blue-collar, honest-workingman, anti-capitalist ethos to the brand.

Walker's analysis breaks down in places. He can't fathom why people would pay more for a Viking range or an iPod when competing products are cheaper. Most iPod buyers have never heard of such features as "Smart Playlists" and thus, he concludes, do not understand "all the functions that they paid a premium to obtain" -- as if those functions, and not the device's sleek form, are what drew 100 million purchasers. He considers the notion that people can pay for aesthetic pleasure but then dismisses it, saying it sounds more like a "rationale" than a rational choice. He's likewise baffled by why anyone would buy Method's leaky but beautiful, hourglass-shaped bottle of dish soap. Since we don't parade around town impressing others with elegant cleaning products, there's no "purely rational defense" for buying one, he says, seemingly oblivious to the possibility that we can rationally spend money on aesthetic pleasures we will enjoy alone.

But his major argument is convincing: In this new era of participatory marketing, many brands' meanings -- once crafted and maintained from atop the peaks of corporate hierarchies -- now originate from consumers. We once feared an Orwellian future in which big, scary corporations secretly manipulated our thoughts and desires. But commercial influence has become an open-source project. "We have already met the new hidden persuaders," writes Walker, "and they are us."

Copyright 2008, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

Review

"Gosling's work, reminiscent of Martha Stout's "The Sociopath Next Door" in its vivid, true-to-life portraits of people and places, is a unique blend of scholarly research and accessible vignettes. Expect future books from this young scholar, whose storytelling skills prove he's capable of bridging the gap between ivory-tower dwellers and street denizens."-"Library Journal," starred review

"Gosling, a psychology professor, shows us how the bits and pieces of our everyday lives can reveal more than we ever imagined. Did you know that the stuff you keep on your desk can tell a shrewd observer not just your likes and dislikes, but also your political leanings, your sexual interests, your fears, even your secret self-image (as opposed to the version of yourself you present to the world)?"-"Booklist"

"The basic premise behind "Snoop" is that you can tell an awful lot about a person based on their apartment; their work space; their favorite music; their style of dress - even their trash. (Gosling approvingly quotes Ward Harrison, a professional scavenger who made a career rummaging through the trash of celebs, who once said, "Garbage is a window into the soul.") This thesis puts "Snoop" firmly in "Blink" or "Freakonomics" territory."-"New York Post"

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books (May 26, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0465027814
• ISBN-13: 978-0465027811
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 5.9 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (32 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #178,597 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

37 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting, but a few flaws, June 26, 2008

By	Charlie "Librarian" (Virginia, USA) - See all my reviews

About: University of Texas at Austin psychology professor Gosling fancies himself a "snoopologist" and studies how people's belongings exhibit their personalities. While he believes belongings give clues to personality, he notes that it does not work for all folks in all situations. Personality is defined as "An individual's unique pattern of thinking, feeling, and behaving that is consistent over time." (pg 28). Gosling uses the Big 5 personality traits (Openness to Experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism) to further break down the personalities he describes in the book and spends quite a bit of time going over the basics of these 5 traits. He discusses many studies of how certain behaviors and owned objects of humans fit these personality traits, and even analyzes the office of ABC News anchor Charles Gibson

Things I Thought Were Interesting:

* Only in extreme cases can you learn much from a person's refrigerator

* Formal dress tends to be a good indicator of conscientiousness

* People can match strangers to their cars better than chance

* Bedrooms, Facebook profiles and personal web sites tend to give reliable info on
personality

* Bedrooms of liberals tend to have a larger variety of books, music and art supplies, while conservatives have more flags, alcohol bottles and sports paraphernalia

* Male bedrooms have fewer photos of families and friends, closets that tend to be open with stuff on hooks and more hats and caps than female bedrooms

* In a job interview, dress and amount the applicant leans forward tends to give clues to job motivation

* A more personalized office means a higher commitment to the organization

* Maps in a space points to diverese interests and open-mindedness


Pros: Clear writing, sources cited (but not in-text), interesting "tidbits" of info found throughout

Cons: Parts read like a primer on social psychology and personality, which leaves too little room for talk about people's "stuff" and makes the book seem to be more about what humans do than what they own. People whose work he cites gave him blurbs for the book (tit for tat perhaps?)

31 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Mildly interesting - geared to a young audience, July 8, 2008

By	M. H. Edelmuth (San Francisco, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I enjoy pop psychology books but I found this book a little tedious and droning at times. Some thoughts were interesting, such as identifiers being geared to influence the opinion of others versus to reassure yourself, but because the test subjects were nearly all college students I, as a person over 40, didn't find much of interest for the world that I inhabit. The author did not acknowledge that college students and that time in a person's life is unlike the bulk of an average person's existence. College and young adulthood is a time of trying out new identities, supporting causes, and learning about new social ideals, and few demands made on your time by children, aging parents, and spouses. So while it's interesting to hear about how young adults decorate their dorm rooms and how that reflects their personality it would be more interesting (to me) to visit people out of the academic milieu and learn how to make educated guesses about their personalities.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best thing since Blink, August 26, 2008

By	Canadian Profiler - See all my reviews

Few writers can entertain and inform at the same time. Even fewer can back up the informational component with their own empirical research. Sam Gosling is one of those few.

Sam snoops. In your office, your room, or your trash, Gosling digs up diagnostic information about your personality. Not (purely) out of prurience, but out of scientific doggedness, he systematically assembles a personality profile that can be used to predict future behavior.

Unabashedly, Gosling discloses a full range of snooping strategies. And goes on to link them to popular notions of how we make decisions about people. One comes away feeling both guilty and comforted by the fact that we are cluttering up the world with evidence of our passage.