The Private Eye Exercise

I knew they’d catch up with Wishcraft some day. (Well, apparently the CIA did the same thing in the 40’s, but I don’t think they told anybody about it.) Here's what the wonderful Powell's bookstore sent up today:

Snoop: What Your Stuff Says about You New Science of Snooping
by Sam Gosling

Publisher Comments:
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.

Review:
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.
... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review)


About the Author
Sam Gosling is an associate professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin. He has spent the last decade conducting research on how personality is expressed and perceived in everyday contexts. He has been profiled by the New York Times, Psychology Today, and other publications, and he is featured in