Behavioural residue’ is what psychologists call the things we accidentally leave behind: the stashed wine bottle, the torn-up manuscript, the punch dent in the wall. The psychologist Professor Sam Gosling advises the curious to ‘look out for discrepancies in the signals that people send to themselves and others’. Broadcasting one version of self in their private spaces and another in their hallways, kitchens and offices can hint at a tortuous ‘fractionating of the self’.
