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Mar 13, 2009

Trevor rated it:

Do you know that feeling you have when you have enjoyed a book and are about to write a review and think, “God, I hope that not everything I say sounds like a criticism.”

Well, I did enjoy this book, but I’ve a horrible feeling that might not come across.

If I’d been writing this book I would have started off by calling it, “So You Think You Want to be Sherlock Holmes?” Do you know how the start of every Holmes mystery has him showing off by telling his new client (or the More...

17 comments like (22 people liked it)

Jul 03, 2008

Kip rated it:

Picked this up after hearing the author on NPR. It's much more theoretical/academic than I'd hoped, and the real-life anecdotes are almost exclusively drawn from the author's academic life -- so unless you are looking for lots of rumination about dorm rooms and admissions interviews, this may not be the book for you.

Also, I can't remember the last time I felt an author LOVING himself as much Dr. Gosling does here. He really does think he's the shiz. If I ever discovered a guy texting More...

0 comments like (9 people liked it)

Feb 15, 2009

Brian rated it:

I was not going to review the book until I read the negative reviews from some folks here. All I can assume is that they did not read it carefully (if at all) or simply did not understand and apply the concepts within.

Can the methods here tell you a great deal about others no matter the setting? Yep. I have no idea why one poster claimed that it only pertained to academia.

Are you curious to know what the attitude is of the banker with whom you are hoping to do business? More...

0 comments like (7 people liked it)

Apr 10, 2009

Jackie "the Librarian" rated it:

I had to return this book to the library before I was finished, but I didn't mind. It had never captured my interest. I didn't like the charts, and I wasn't interested in analyzing myself just to be able to understand the methods presented here.
I felt like the author never got to the nitty-gritty of what things meant, but kept describing rooms without then analyzing them clearly for the reader. This was not the book for me, not wanting to do the work of figuring out the charts, or the leng More...

3 comments like (4 people liked it)

Jul 04, 2008

Christy rated it:

Aside from the arresting cover design, I was also drawn to this book because I have, at times, exhibited tendencies toward incorrigible snooping. Rifling through people's belongings is so much easier than actually talking to them, isn't it? The premise of Snoop is that people reveal their personalities through their environments: homes, offices, dorm rooms, cars, etc. For the keen observer, there is much to be learned from someone's personal space.

The problem with a lot of these p More...

0 comments like (9 people liked it)

Jul 14, 2008

Jennifer rated it:

The book's claim is that you can tell what people are like by looking at their stuff. This is an interesting premise, but I didn't think that the book quite lived up to it. It spent quite a bit of time exploring what it really means to know someone, and how we can categorize personality characteristics. After he's gone through this, he starts talking about whether (and how) we can judge someone's openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism from their belongings. More...

0 comments like (6 people liked it)

Oct 05, 2008

Carol rated it:

This seemed like a really good fun read--how to "read" a person based on their stuff in their room. Heck, who doesn't do it already?

But it reads like an expanded, somewhat lightened academic paper. I majored in Psych and enjoy social science research, but I expected a fun Mary Roach-esque romp through entertainment science, and it wasn't.

Gosling tried to keep it light, but just threw study after study into the book. Some only tenuously connected to the ove More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Jan 16, 2011

Ed rated it:

I found this book a tedious. It seemed as if the author had very little to say and filed the book with quotes from studies done by others. This must be a university publish or perish situation.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 25, 2008

Alfajirikali rated it:

I heard about this book from an author talk on NPR. It sounded very interesting. It goes over personality types and basic motivation in order that one can become a "snooper". It is intended to develop the awareness of psychological aspects which manifest themselves in the physicality of the environment one inhabits.

Although there were some interesting tidbits (i.e. "robocop" as a personality type, and the significance of tattoo placement), there really wasn't More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 21, 2008

Barky rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

May 28, 2011

Crosby rated it:

A good "in-between-semesters" type of book, i.e. entertaining, thought-provoking and not too long. Sam Gosling is a UT-Austin psychology professor whose research interest has landed him on numerous TV and news shows. Specifically, he profiles people using their living spaces as clues to their personality and self-identity. Anyone reading the book will quickly find themselves comparing their offices, bedrooms, cd collections, FaceBook pages etc to his profiles--it's unavoidable. I did More...

2 comments like

May 12, 2011

Jennifer rated it:

I forget exactly where I heard about this book. I suspect it was either on The Happiness Project blog or the Non-Consumer Advocate blog. Either way I read about it, looked it up, and heady with the power of Lansing library's website, immediately placed a hold on a copy and was able to go pick it up a few days later. I love my new library!

Anyway, the book's subtitle is a tiny bit misleading. Of course you could read this book and figure out what other people might think of your stuff, b More...

0 comments like

May 02, 2011

Julie rated it:

What could someone learn about your personality by checking out your bedroom? How about your iTunes playlist? Or your Facebook profile? That's what Sam Gosling sets out to discuss in Snoop.

Gosling uses our various environments, both physical and virtual, to describe our personalities according to psychology's "big five" indicators: openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. He describes where many of our instincts get it right -- people are re More...

0 comments like

Mar 18, 2011

Kater rated it:

This book is justification for the people who inspect others' bookshelves and secretly judge them. As we all pretty much knew already, you CAN find out a lot about people by looking at their stuff. The question is, how much?

That's what this book delves into. Gosling has done much of the research himself, for which I commend him, and he has plenty of tables and charts peppering the book with visual explanations of what this research has revealed. However, despite what the jacket says More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Apr 02, 2009

Adrienne rated it:

Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You by Sam Gosling, Ph.D. is a book about the psychology of possessions. Gosling has studied people’s stuff and living spaces for awhile now, and has gotten to the point where he can tell a number of things about a person just by examining a bedroom, bathroom or office. It was interesting to see the generalities that he has come up with during the course of his research (apparently, having sports memorabilia on your walls makes you more likely to be conservative More...

0 comments like

Nov 10, 2010

Azadeh rated it:

Before picking up this book, I initially giggled at a review that said:” Gosh, did you know that if someone has flowers on their desk, it means they probably like flowers? That's about the gist of this book.”

But after finishing the book, I feel like that is an unfair over-generalization of this work. As a scientist (albeit in the biological sciences), I appreciated the seemingly thorough referencing of both his and other groups’ findings. I liked that we got to see the “raw data”, bu More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 01, 2009

Grace rated it:

I can't make up my mind about this book because it seemed like every time I turned the page, the author stated something that piqued my curiosity or crossed that fine line between being a half way decent person and being a scumbag.

I thoroughly enjoyed the implementation and use of a new personality test, called OCEANs Five, which focused on Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism. I felt this new system was able to more broadly encompass the variati More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Dec 21, 2010

Claire rated it:

Professor of Coolness(at least he's trying to be with this buddy-buddy writing style!) Dr. Gosling explains how people's rooms/offices/blogs/etc reflect major personality traits such as conscientiousness, openness, extroversion, and to a lesser extent, agreeableness and neuroticism. I thought this book would be a little wacko, but it's not - it's interesting, well-researched, and well-illustrated with compelling research examples. Who knew that people who have those horrible inspirational poster More...

0 comments like

Jul 27, 2010

James rated it:

Interesting and entertaining, but - the reason I'm giving this three stars instead of four or five - it made me uneasy at points, when the author talked about going through parts of people's homes or lives that I would consider private and off-limits in the absence of consent.
Specifically, although he made a big point of having obtained people's permission to go through their living and work spaces in the course of formal research, he also talked about having gone through the medicine che More...

0 comments like

Oct 05, 2010

Spoonbridge rated it:

This was a fascinating, quick read that urges the reader to indulge in their inner voyeur when encountering new people, “snooping” common household and personal objects to indulge in clues as to their personality, both “outer” and “inner.” From the types of decorations to the music we listen to, author Sam Gosling argues that everything can be a clue to a certain person’s level of extroversion or introversion, openness, even their likely political beliefs. While written engagingly, the book can More...

0 comments like

Sep 30, 2010

Carl rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

2 comments like

Sep 17, 2010

surpriseitsnada rated it:

Interesting book. 5 stars for being an intriguing topic. We're naturally interested in learning about other people, and this book picks up on that veyuerism well. He sheds some light on how to identify character traits other people have based on their stuff. Great read.

I wish it had been more of a "how to analyze personality based on your own findings," but it wasn't. There were some tips on what things alluded to different personality characteristics, or items of "Th More...

0 comments like

Jan 12, 2012

Heather rated it:

I must admit I was expecting a more traditional psychological/personality quiz book. I found neither dry (if enlightening) biochemistry or easy sorting methods to determine personality type.

Rather, this seems to build quite successfully on the Big Five theory of personality, while documenting some of the researcher's personal and sometimes not quite rigorously scientific experiments.

This book didn't reveal a skeleton key for unlocking the hidden language of humans, which was More...

0 comments like

Mar 03, 2011

Judy rated it:

This book was more psychological than I expected. Not being big on reading psychology I wasn't sure what I was in for, but was pleasantly surprised as indicated by my 4 star rating. My original motivation for picking up this book was to find out why someone would snoop in a friend's medicine cabinet and bedroom. Mr. Gosling never gives the answer, in fact, he encourages the reader to do the same. However, after reading his book, I'm sure it has to do with his lower level of conscientiousness. ( More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Mar 02, 2011

Leah rated it:

I have to say I didn't really like this book very much. I enjoyed the premise, which is that our physical trappings can give insights into our inner lives. I agree with that, but I found the presentation in this book to be off-putting.

The author seems to have tried to appeal to a wider audience by couching his arguments and hypotheses in a pseudo how-to book. All of the chapters are framed in a "how-to-be-a-snoop" style. I would have preferred just a simple, straightforward More...

4 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 15, 2008

Ellen rated it:

Today, a friend emailed me photos of her new house. I couldn't help but think of this book as I looked through the rooms.

Snoop is an interesting study of how people's stuff reflects their personalities and the events that occur in their lives. Unforutnately, there was a lot of personality psychology and not a lot of usable examples.

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Sep 19, 2011

Jean rated it:

I think I was expecting this book to be one huge list of what certain things mean when you come across them in someone's home. Truly, it teaches you enough psychology that you can interpret what you come across while 'snooping' and trying to figure someone out. You learn to pick up clues to 'behaviour reside' which people naturally make and tells us about that person in the grand psychology/personality scheme of things. It also teaches the reader how to distinguish between real clues and ones th More...

0 comments like

Oct 17, 2009

Kristen rated it:

I don't actually approve of the surface premise of the book -- going through medicine cabinets and such (which he does endorse). I'm very big on personal space and privacy. But I was very interested in what people assume about you from your stuff as well as what signals people try to send with their belongings. And one of the most interesting aspects is how those two things don't always align -- some possessions (or general organization of possessions) can produce a very different impression tha More...

0 comments like

Feb 27, 2009

pri rated it:

such an interesting book should not put someone to sleep. yet it did. time and time again. i found the material interesting and thought-provoking but also dry as toast much of the time. (maybe it was just not the right book at the right time?). i think i *was* hoping for a little bit of 'if you dream this, it means that' but the book talked more about where to find clues and the value of some clues versus another.

i'm not saying it isn't really interesting information... just a bit o More...

1 comment like

Jun 15, 2010

Sarah rated it:

Sam Gosling's book integrates classical theories of personality with the idea that by assessing one's workplace/home/collection of stuff, we will be able to gain a more accurate picture of one's personality than we would from traditional personality assessments. Gosling touches on how constructs like gender stereotypes influence our perception of other people simply based on the stuff in their environment. He debunks the idea that we are able to "fake" our personality (i.e., if we're g More...

1 comment like