Sam Gosling

Psychologist, Author, Expert on Human Perception

BIG IDEAS

• A Room With a Clue
  How are we connected to the spaces in which we live and work? How do our living rooms, bedrooms, offices, music collections, and facebook profiles reflect what we are like and, more fundamentally, who we are? And how can our productivity and welfare be improved by understanding how we relate to our personal environments?
  
  We are so tightly bound to our living and work spaces that many of the connections linking people and places go unnoticed. But these environments are rich with information about our values, attitudes, preferences, and personality. In his recent book, Snoop, Gosling presents the result of a decades worth of research unraveling the links between people and places and figuring out what they mean. Some clues—the Obama poster on the office wall or the high-brow books left casually lying on the coffee table—are deliberate (but not always disingenuous) signals to others about how we would like to be seen. Other clues—the music on your iPod or the disarray in the office-desk drawer—are inadvertent reflections of our styles of feeling and thinking and of our history of behavior. Gosling’s studies of physical, aural, and virtual environments illuminate the intimate bonds between people the worlds they craft around themselves. The research yields lessons for the impressions we form of others in everyday life (and the impressions they are forming of us) and for designing spaces that accommodate our multifaceted psychological needs.
• From Mice to Men
  In a classic scene from the movie Pulp Fiction, Jules Winfield, the gangster played by Samuel L. Jackson suggested, “a dog’s got personality and personality goes a long way.” His remark reflects a position that is seen as either blindingly obvious (by most dog owners, for example) or as plainly preposterous (by many animal researchers fearful of falling prey to anthropomorphism). Yet there is nothing in evolutionary theory to suggest that only physical traits are subject to selection pressures; indeed Darwin himself argued that emotions exist in both human and nonhuman animals, so why not personality too? Gosling’s pioneering research (for which he received the American Psychological Association’s Distinguished Early Career Award) on animals ranging from squid and hyenas to dogs and chimpanzees has demonstrated that our personality attributions to animals are not merely sentimental projections of human traits onto animals; instead, personality traits do exist and can be measured in animals. His lab’s current projects focus on risk taking in chimpanzees, matching shelter dogs to suitable adoptive homes, and identifying military dogs suitable for explosive-detection work.

SNAPSHOT BIO

Sam Gosling is an author and associate professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin. He is a nationally regarded researcher and innovator in the field of personality and social psychology. His work has been widely covered in the media, including The New York Times, Psychology Today, NPR, and "Good Morning America," and his research is featured in Malcolm Gladwell's Blink. Gosling is the recipient of the American Psychological Association's Distinguished Scientific Award for Early Career Contribution.

Gosling’s book, Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You, is a provocative and witty look at how our private spaces—from boardroom to bedroom—reveal our personalities, whether we know it or not! Does what's on your desk reveal what's on your mind? Do those pictures on your walls tell true tales about you? For the last ten years Gosling has been studying how people project (and protect) their inner selves. By exploring our private worlds, he explores not only how we showcase our personalities in unexpected—and unplanned—ways, but also how we create personality in the first place, communicate it others, and interpret the world around us.

A Closer Look at Sam

FOCUS AREAS
What's on Sam's current research agenda?

The Psychology of Facebook. The massive growth of social networking technologies like Facebook and Twitter reflects the fact that they meet a broad range of psychological motivations. Current research looks at what we can learn from these technologies about basic human social needs.

To What Extent Can Psychology Inform Architecture? For many years designers have acknowledged the importance of understanding the beings that inhabit their buildings, but few architects have taken the idea seriously. Visionary designer Chris Travis has developed a system for tailoring built spaces to individuals’ psychological and emotional needs. One current project aims to evaluate the effectiveness of Travis’ system in the context of low-cost housing, with the aim of improving welfare of low-income occupants and breaking the cycle of homelessness.

Canine-Related Work

Military Working Dogs (MWDs) are by far the most effective and versatile current means of identifying explosives in theater contexts. MWDs are exceptionally sensitive sensors for all currently important threat substances, and they can be rapidly trained to meet new threats by detecting new substances. Moreover, they are incredibly mobile, able to rapidly traverse a wide array of terrains (e.g., open country, busy streets, forests, tunnels, houses, marshland, container ships) and negotiate objects (e.g., stairways, fences, crowds of people). MWDs can also follow gradients of odor concentration, allowing to follow a target odor rapidly up to source, a talent beyond the capability of any current electronic sensing device. However, MWDs with different personalities differ in the effectiveness with which they are able to find explosives in the field. One current project is using personality assessments to improve the effectiveness with which MWDs can be trained to detect explosives.

Within the United States alone, an estimated 6,000 animal care and control agencies are facing severe problems arising from pet overpopulation.  The result of all these unwanted pets is the destruction of millions of companion animals in animal shelters each year. Many dogs adopted out by animal shelters are later returned to the shelter by their new owners, with behavioral problems cited as the cause in the majority of cases. One current project, conducted in collaboration with the local municipal animal shelter, applies personality testing to shelter dogs and prospective owners with the aim of improving the match between them, and ultimately reducing the numbers of dogs abandoned, mistreated, and euthanized.

ENGAGEMENTS
How have other organizations utilized Sam's expertise, and what's ahead on his schedule?

Sam has consulted with government agencies, Fortune 100 companies and scientific institutions.

RECOMMENDED READING
What's on Sam's must-read list?

A Place Like Home by Toby Israel

The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It's Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life by Richard Florida