Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You [Hardcover]

"Sam Gosling is an engaging writer, a brilliant psychologist, and a charming individual, and he must never, ever be allowed inside my office!" - Mary Roach, author of Stiff and Bonk

"Sam Gosling is an engaging writer, a brilliant psychologist, and a charming individual, and he must never, ever be allowed inside my office!"

"Charming and well written...readable and practical guide to understanding the people around you."

`Gosling's conclusions are supported by rigorous academic research, but his engaging book is aimed at a popular audience...Snoop's conceit makes for an entertaining tour of how people project their inner selves outward into the world. This may seem like just common sense, but it's not.'

For readers of Blink and Freakonomics, a fascinating book about what our everyday actions and possessions reveal about our personalities, whether we know it or not...

`Highly entertaining'

"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."

"Snoopology is a science with a right way and wrong way of doing it...I was blithely going about it entirely the wrong way. A fascinating book."

Does what's in your bathroom or on your desk reveal what's on your mind? Is your choice of food or the way you sleep about to give you away? And why do handshakes display how outgoing we are more than our bedrooms? For ten years Sam Gosling has been studying how people project (and protect) their inner selves, and how we form impressions of others. One of the world's most ingenious researchers, he dispatches teams of scientific snoops to poke around in people's homes and offices, and discovers that our possessions and daily lives can unexpectedly say more about us, often when the information is cleverly combined, than our most intimate conversations. Once you know what to look for, you can see how reliable a new boyfriend is by peeking into his medicine cabinet or whether an employee is committed to her job by analyzing her desk. The 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.

British-born, Sam Gosling studied at Leeds University and is now an associate professor of psychology at the University of Texas in Austin, where he lives. He has been profiled in the New York Times and other magazines and this is his first book.