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A review by lpm100
Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You by Sam Gosling
1.0
Book Review
1/5 stars
"A rare fail for Basic Books"
*******
Of the book:
11 chapters plus prologue over 231 pages of prose
19 pps/chapter
There are about 111 references in this book (I didn't count too exactly, because it just wasn't worth the time), some of which are to journal articles, some of which are to papers that are yet impressed, and some of which are to books about different topics.
*******
I would have to say that Basic Books dropped the ball on this one, because this is the first book that I can ever remember reading on that label that is utter crap.
I ended up paying a lot more for this book than I should have (any nonzero number is too much).
Essentially, it's a lot of anecdotal evidence stapled together to create a book (which is apparently easier to do than you might imagine), and after all of that: it doesn't really tell me that much I didn't know.
Is it news that people like to virtue signal?
Is it news that you can deduce a lot about people's psychology from looking at their living space?
Is it news that if you have an idea of someone psychology that you could have a pretty idea of what their house would look like?
How many chances do you have to actually do something like this? (How well do you think you would go over if you asked someone: "In order to get an idea of your personality I would like to go in your bedroom and check your things. Your underwear drawer could be a rich source of information about your level of openness/conscientiousness"?)
*******
The author also engages in a lot of anguished hand wringing about stereotypes. But, a lot of them are useful even as uncomfortable as it may be for academics.
It's a settled issue for those of us who live in the real world. (I have questions about the accuracy of some of the data in chapter 8. Pace of life in 31 countries from fastest to slowest has the United States 10 spots below England. England is undoubtedly the most disorganized place that I've ever lived in my life. Ever.)
Each chapter, in a nutshell:
1. Virtue signaling can be for others as well as for the self; oftentimes, people set up rooms in order to create a certain type of ambiance.
2. Exposition of the "Big 5" factor model of personality (which is what the psychological community happens to believe this week) as a way to reproducibly quantify personal characteristics. The personality types are continuous / non-discrete and make use of the often-troublesome correlation coefficient.
3. Getting to know somebody is something that proceeds in stages, and only happens when they let their guard down to know you. Arthur Aron is a psychologist at SUNY has developed a questionnaire that's very useful in this way.
4. Using contextual cues is a limited tool.
5. Assessment to physical characteristics is a tool, but a weak one. The author even admits that his correlation coefficients are weak (p.96). And even then, large numbers of people very consistently rely on even weaker evidence to make judgments.
6. People may make attempts at misdirection in order to convey a false impression, but some things are just too difficult to conceal.
7. Stereotypes are meant to economize on knowledge, and they do persist because they just may have some truth to them.
8. Social skills (agreeableness) and motivation (conscientiousness) are two different things that are often confused one for the other during job interviews that leads to unpleasant results. (Many false positives AND false negatives.) Doing lots of nodding and smiling can give an impression of agreeableness.
Hoarding and obsessive compulsive disorder are linked. Hoarders are of three types: utilitarian/sentimental/narcissistic.
9. Recapitulation of certain psychological concepts. i. Anchoring (when you put a number on something, people's expectations are closer to that number). ii. Context-dependence is part of clues. iii. Cues are unrelated to the topic at hand can nonetheless be used to gather information. iv. Some cues are subject control, and others are not. v. Some clues make sense only if you understand what you are looking at (normal guys won't be able to do much with different observations on lipstick).
10. A case study of an office that the author was given to snoop through.
11. Yes, there are people that are trying to repackage knowing people's psychological makeup into selling them houses that are designed around their psychological makeup. Real big news flash here: when people live together in a house, their own preferences around the way that things should be organized can cause conflict. (This is REALLY a surprise to me that came from the middle of nowhere after I have been married for 15 years!)
Verdict: Not recommended -- even at zero price, because the time it takes to read cannot be recovered
Bonus:
The 36 questions of "Aaron's Sharing Game" are helpful.
1/5 stars
"A rare fail for Basic Books"
*******
Of the book:
11 chapters plus prologue over 231 pages of prose
19 pps/chapter
There are about 111 references in this book (I didn't count too exactly, because it just wasn't worth the time), some of which are to journal articles, some of which are to papers that are yet impressed, and some of which are to books about different topics.
*******
I would have to say that Basic Books dropped the ball on this one, because this is the first book that I can ever remember reading on that label that is utter crap.
I ended up paying a lot more for this book than I should have (any nonzero number is too much).
Essentially, it's a lot of anecdotal evidence stapled together to create a book (which is apparently easier to do than you might imagine), and after all of that: it doesn't really tell me that much I didn't know.
Is it news that people like to virtue signal?
Is it news that you can deduce a lot about people's psychology from looking at their living space?
Is it news that if you have an idea of someone psychology that you could have a pretty idea of what their house would look like?
How many chances do you have to actually do something like this? (How well do you think you would go over if you asked someone: "In order to get an idea of your personality I would like to go in your bedroom and check your things. Your underwear drawer could be a rich source of information about your level of openness/conscientiousness"?)
*******
The author also engages in a lot of anguished hand wringing about stereotypes. But, a lot of them are useful even as uncomfortable as it may be for academics.
It's a settled issue for those of us who live in the real world. (I have questions about the accuracy of some of the data in chapter 8. Pace of life in 31 countries from fastest to slowest has the United States 10 spots below England. England is undoubtedly the most disorganized place that I've ever lived in my life. Ever.)
Each chapter, in a nutshell:
1. Virtue signaling can be for others as well as for the self; oftentimes, people set up rooms in order to create a certain type of ambiance.
2. Exposition of the "Big 5" factor model of personality (which is what the psychological community happens to believe this week) as a way to reproducibly quantify personal characteristics. The personality types are continuous / non-discrete and make use of the often-troublesome correlation coefficient.
3. Getting to know somebody is something that proceeds in stages, and only happens when they let their guard down to know you. Arthur Aron is a psychologist at SUNY has developed a questionnaire that's very useful in this way.
4. Using contextual cues is a limited tool.
5. Assessment to physical characteristics is a tool, but a weak one. The author even admits that his correlation coefficients are weak (p.96). And even then, large numbers of people very consistently rely on even weaker evidence to make judgments.
6. People may make attempts at misdirection in order to convey a false impression, but some things are just too difficult to conceal.
7. Stereotypes are meant to economize on knowledge, and they do persist because they just may have some truth to them.
8. Social skills (agreeableness) and motivation (conscientiousness) are two different things that are often confused one for the other during job interviews that leads to unpleasant results. (Many false positives AND false negatives.) Doing lots of nodding and smiling can give an impression of agreeableness.
Hoarding and obsessive compulsive disorder are linked. Hoarders are of three types: utilitarian/sentimental/narcissistic.
9. Recapitulation of certain psychological concepts. i. Anchoring (when you put a number on something, people's expectations are closer to that number). ii. Context-dependence is part of clues. iii. Cues are unrelated to the topic at hand can nonetheless be used to gather information. iv. Some cues are subject control, and others are not. v. Some clues make sense only if you understand what you are looking at (normal guys won't be able to do much with different observations on lipstick).
10. A case study of an office that the author was given to snoop through.
11. Yes, there are people that are trying to repackage knowing people's psychological makeup into selling them houses that are designed around their psychological makeup. Real big news flash here: when people live together in a house, their own preferences around the way that things should be organized can cause conflict. (This is REALLY a surprise to me that came from the middle of nowhere after I have been married for 15 years!)
Verdict: Not recommended -- even at zero price, because the time it takes to read cannot be recovered
Bonus:
The 36 questions of "Aaron's Sharing Game" are helpful.