Book Review: Snoop What Your Stuff Says About You

Have you ever taken a peek inside your date's medicine cabinet while using their bathroom? Do you scan someone's office upon entering to get a better idea of who you're dealing with? Is there any significance in how someone arranges their refrigerator? No matter how polite we are, all of us have snooped from time to time-with good reason too, as the ability to correctly read people based on any information that's available can help us be successful in choosing a mate or accurately assess potential threats. With Snoop, Sam Gosling has attempted to give us a guide book to aid in helping us figure out familiar and unfamiliar people based on their physical environments.

You might initially be perplexed that it took Gosling 227 pages to tell you how to be an expert snooper but the book goes far beyond what to look for when you snoop. The author asserts that in order to be able to properly interpret snooping clues you have to understand the five pillars of personality--openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. The first half of the book focuses on defining and explaining the pillars of personality followed by how to apply this to your own personality. The book segues by providing extended anecdotes on how certain space clues reflected elements of subjects' personalities. Then, various research data is presented that informs you how to properly assess personality elements based on appearance and handshakes. Gosling then discusses how people may purposely arrange their spaces to mislead you, asserts his belief in stereotypes, and how to keep snooping assessments accurate by collating multiple clues. He concludes by presenting a case study of snooping in Charles Gibson's and Mike Barz's offices and then comes full circle by discussing how spaces can be designed to fit the personality needs of their occupants, which is the opposite of what normally happens.

Overall, the book is an entertaining read and even provides some utilitarian information. There's plenty of pop culture and current event references and some interesting stories related to the subject matter. The main pitfall of the book was its unstructured organization, which may be attributed to Gosling's self conceded disorganized personality. The author goes off on some tangents that aren't really relevant to the subject matter and you'll sometimes find yourself wondering "where's he going with this" without ever getting an answer.

Gosling dapples just enough interesting and useful information to keep you engaged. He tells us that neurotic people tend to dress in darker garments and decorate their offices with inspirational quotes and how facial features actually convey information about personality.

You won't need a psychology degree to understand any of what Gosling, a psychologist himself, is trying to say. All jargon and concepts are fully explained and ample examples provided.

After reading this book, you won't be able to nail a stranger down to a T, but you'll be able to pick up a thing or two you wouldn't have noticed before you read Snoop.

Snoop retails for $25.00 hardcover but can be picked up on Amazon for $16.50.