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“Snoop – What Your Stuff Says About You”
Dr. Sam Gosling
ISBN:978-1-84668-018-2

Cost £9 (half price!) from Amazon.co.uk

Difficulty
Requires study. If you're a cold reader with half a brain, you'll be fine.

Review
For someone like me - a self-confessed information junkie with a passion for statistics and psychology - this is an essential book. For a mentalist or reader looking for a new edge, it’s also essential. Gosling is associate professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin. His area of research for the last decade has been how we project our inner selves onto our everyday lives – how we dress, our stuff, how we use language, etc. He’s the world’s leading authority on using this “behavioural residue” to enter your mind to find the real you.

But while this book is accessible, it’s certainly no easy pop psychology read. You have not “seen it all before” either, believe me. This is a serious, original work. The acknowledgements run to 3.5 pages, the references to 17. This is cutting-edge psychology applied to predicting your character, your attitudes, your actions, your future – even the way you vote. Derren Brown has nothing on this guy. Gosling shows how to uncover various layers of personality to get to the “inner story” of a person. If you’re familiar with things like OCEAN or Goffman’s “The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life”, you’ll be up and running in no time. If you’re not, it’s okay: everything’s explained for you.

Did you know, for instance, that personality traits cluster together? Do you know what motivates narcissists, or that in Spring 2001 (way before 9/11) David Winter of the University of Michigan wrote a paper accurately predicting what George W. Bush would do during his presidency and how he’d run it? Do you know how? Gosling does, and he spills the beans.

Overall
My copy of this book already has plenty of pages turned down, pencil marks and notes in the margins, and there’ll be plenty more before I’m finished. If you do readings, get this book. Read it. Learn from it. Use it. It puts what would normally be several hundred very learned academic papers into an easily digestible and above all accessible form you can use. I also urge you to visit Gosling's homepage at the University of Texas and read about his research.

I picked this up yesterday in Barnes and Noble for $25 (hardback), on Tomo's recommendation.

I've yet to get far enough into it to comment on its usefulness in mentalism and readings, but it is definitely a fascinating - and fun - read. I think you'll enjoy it whether it comes in useful at your next psychic fair/tacky tarot party or not!

I'd seen this in waterstones, but the title put me off as trash psychology, but now I'm tempted.

mines on order from amazon.co.uk

quick tip: when you study a book like this, it's very useful to test it against someone you know well, and to who you have good access. That way you can get a feel for the techniques so it's not all dry theory.

Has no-one read the other 'Snoop' book by the same author?

Snoop: The secret language of stuff.

Sounds very similar...

I would assume it's the same book, different subtitle - probably altered to sound more appealing/commercial.

misterblack wrote:I would assume it's the same book, different subtitle - probably altered to sound more appealing/commercial.

You never know. It has a different ISBN, though.

Reading Malcolm Gladwells blink which has mentioned the research in this. The Sam Gosling website is well worth checking out for the publications page.

http://homepage.psy.utexas.edu/homepage ... y/gosling/

Gosling is back. Slashdot reports that it's possible to tell which way someone leans politically by how messy they are. http://idle.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid ... 2&from=rss

Tomo wrote:Gosling is back. Slashdot reports that it's possible to tell which way someone leans politically by how messy they are.

Well, he's got me completely wrong. I'm terminally cluttery, with piles of stuff all over the house. Pretty much every piece of music I own could be called folk or classic rock. Plenty of art supplies (also sewing materials, but they're art supplies as far as I'm concerned). No stamps, flags, or sporting equipment. Only one laundry basket and one calendar in the house, each for practical purposes. On the other hand, I don't own any books about travel, ethnicity, feminism, or music, either.

According to the article, this would place me as leaning pretty far left, whereas actually I'm a true-blue Thatcherite Telegraph reader.

EDIT: I see this is also the same research group who claimed to assess personality based on the type of music you like, which we discussed on the QI Forum and decided was basically tosh. Music preferences are strongly linked to age and education, for a start. The music research is based on the assumption that "people consider music to be an important aspect of their lives and listening to music as an activity they engaged in frequently" -- which is not necessarily true.

I'm still interested in the book Snoop, and will keep an eye out for it, but am unlikely to buy it at full price.

Robbie wrote:which we discussed on the QI Forum

When is series F coming out? I thought it was this month but there's nothing in the listings.

Tomo wrote:

Robbie wrote:which we discussed on the QI Forum

When is series F coming out? I thought it was this month but there's nothing in the listings.

Im sure at the end of the last one they said it was the 'last ever'. At least they made it sound that way.

MagicBell wrote:Im sure at the end of the last one they said it was the 'last ever'. At least they made it sound that way.

Fret not. I thought that too, but then I read they'd shot another series.

Tomo wrote:

MagicBell wrote:Im sure at the end of the last one they said it was the 'last ever'. At least they made it sound that way.

Fret not. I thought that too, but then I read they'd shot another series.

Good stuff. No more Elephant in the Room though.



On the topic of Gosling. I saw Snoop in Waterstones in Hampstead in North London with a 'Save £3' sticker on it, and their copies were signed. If you're interested in that kinda thing.

Elsewise, if you want it a bit cheaper than retail, buy online. It's always cheaper. Last option is to wait for the paperback but thats apparently not out until next June.


I've got mine but I have other books to read first.