Samuel Gosling

'Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You,' published in 2008, explores how personal spaces—bedrooms, offices, websites—reveal personality traits. Gosling presents findings from his research program showing that everyday environments leak reliable signals about the Big Five personality dimensions.

Gosling developed the 'room scan' methodology, in which trained observers rate individuals' bedrooms or offices on standardized scales, and these ratings are then compared to the occupants' self-reported personality scores. This approach demonstrated that strangers could infer certain traits—like conscientiousness and openness—above chance levels.

Gosling is a professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, where he has been on the faculty since the late 1990s. His lab focuses on personality processes, animal personality, and how physical and digital environments reflect individual differences.

Yes, Gosling has conducted influential research on animal personality, studying traits in species ranging from dogs and cats to hyenas and chimpanzees. His work helped establish that personality dimensions can be reliably measured in animals using methods analogous to human personality assessment.