How to Snoop: A book review

For Social/personality Psychology, I read a book called SNOOP: What your stuff says about you by Dr. Sam Gosling. I have a group presentation on it on Monday, but that is muchly beside the point.

Here's what I learned: snooping is hard. That is, creeping on people's stuff and living spaces and making inferences about their personality based on your findings is easier read than done.

The most obvious person to snoop on is my fabulous roommate, Jessi. But even that has left me stumped. Maybe it would be easier with someone I don't know, to go into their room and say, "This person is probably like this" before I ever meet them. Theoretically (although it was not written at all to be a self-help book), SNOOP can help me make judgments about people: prospective boyfriends, friends, coworkers, whatever. But I can't even figure out myself that well based on what I read.

I'm supposed to, specifically, use my findings to determine the personality traits included in the OCEAN Big Five: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraverted, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism.

Here's how I rank (roughly) based on my snooping on myself:
I rank just a little above-average on openness.
I rank pretty highly on conscientiousness.
No evidence based on my belongings whether or not I rank highly in extraversion (although I already know that I rank pretty low).
Also no evidence on whether or not I rank highly in agreeableness (although I think I am a little below-average).
I am above average on neuroticism.

Here's why:

Openness is determined by weirdness of stuff (my words, not Dr. Gosling's.), as well as craft supplies and variety of books. I think decorations also might have something to do with it.

I have a few weird things, like a glass bottle of bassoon reeds and a rug made out of cut-up t-shirts. I would also have a vase with my dreads sticking out of it if it didn't gross/weird out my roommate. I don't have a huge variety of books, though. I have craft supplies (mostly paper) that I don't use a whole lot, because although I'm not crafty, sometimes I like to pretend I am. And I always like to have my space decorated, of course.

Conscientiousness is determined by maintained organization and a sense of everything having "its place."

I may not be a minimalist by any means, but everything certainly has a place, of course. I am very particular about the way I fold my underwear (and was practically flabbergasted last year when I found out that my roommate, Amy, doesn't fold hers at all!). Dirty clothes go in the basket on the right side of my closet, and worn-but-not-dirty-enough-to-be-washed-yet go in a pile in front of my closet. (Like I said, not obviously organized, but if someone messed with this system, I would be pretty upset.) I maintain an alphabetized system of organizing my DVDs. In fact, the only thing in my room that I can think of that doesn't have a system or rightful place is my desk drawer, which is more or less "miscellaneous" junk anyway.

Neuroticism is only determined (in living spaces) by motivational posters. Which I have a few of, in the form of Bible verses. That's just great.

Well, anyway. I feel like I've talked about myself too much, but isn't that what people with blogs are supposed to do on their blogs?

Basically, the book was very interesting, and very unhelpful. I recommend it.

UPDATE: So I was a little off on some of my personality traits according to the online test I took at outofservice.com/bigfive. I'm in the 2nd percentile for openness ("You prefer traditional and familiar experiences"), the 58th percentile for conscientiousness ("You are neither organized nor disorganized"), the 9th percentile for extraversion (nailed it on that one) ("You probably enjoy spending quiet time alone"), the 32nd percentile for agreeableness ("You find it easy to express irritation with others"--ha! True.), and the 22nd percentile for neuroticism ("You are generally relaxed").


God bless.