He’s somebody who cares about people, but not somebody who is a wild, outgoing, loud extrovert. This suggested the person was extroverted because extroverts, we know, have these places designed to essentially lure people in and get them to stay. The other thing about his office was it was a nice, comfortable space for students to come sit. They weren’t really there for the show of others. So clearly being a good teacher was much more important for the occupant himself. But they were actually all placed so the person could see them himself. There were all these teaching awards up and you could think, well this person is pompous, arrogant and wanting to display their awards to everybody. We compare all of those bits of information to find out what people form impressions of, which ones they form accurately, where they make mistakes and which cues they use.Ĭan you describe some of the items you saw and the overall state of an office you snooped in recently, and explain what conclusions you made about the occupant’s personality? What is it like? Is it colorful? Is it bright? Are there books? Then we give the occupants themselves a personality test and get reports on the occupants from their good friends. We send in volunteers whose job is to ask, what is this person like? Next we send in a different team to inventory the place. We cover up names or anything that’s going to compromise a subject’s anonymity. How do you collect data in, say, a bedroom? Behavioral residue is the residue of our actions, and our actions are the meat of everyday personality. Much of it doesn’t leave a trace, like when we smile or say hello, but a subset does, like when we tidy up our book collection. So maybe we can figure out what people do by looking at the spaces where they spend a lot of time.
If I wanted to study you, how would I do it? Follow you around all day? How would I do it unobtrusively? And so I thought, well, some of the things we do leave a trace in the world.
He wanted to study what people really do. I recently caught up with Gosling to talk about the “special brand of voyeurism” he calls snoopology.Īt Berkeley, where I did my graduate work, my advisor was frustrated that personality psychologists spent most of their time not studying people but self-reports by people-what people say they do. The personality psychologist and University of Texas at Austin professor studies bedrooms, offices, Web sites and iPod playlists for personality clues, and has found, among other trends, that inspirational posters signal a neurotic an organized space with sports décor, a conservative and a messy room with books, an eclectic music collection and maps, a liberal. In his new book, Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You, Sam Gosling makes the case that maybe walls can talk.
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