Sam Gosling the Psychologist

1) _______ Social psychologist, Sam Gosling, a professor at Texas University, specialises in the study of personality differences and how people form impressions of others in their daily life. Here is one of his experiments: he shows people a photo of someone’s bedroom and asks them about that person’s personality. He found that people are quite good at reading someone else’s personality from their bedroom.

2) _______ But when you meet someone for the first time, what is the quickest way of getting to know them? What clues do people use to decide if they like the person? What is one of the most common questions that young people ask?

3) _______ Mr. Gosling thinks the question is, ’What sort of music do you listen to?’ To test this, Mr Gosling gives high school students a new internet friend. The students have six weeks to get to know each other. Then Mr Gosling read all the online conversations. Guess what? The students discuss music far more than any other subject!

4) _______ But can people use music to judge personality accurately? Mr Gosling asks the students to write a list of their ten favourite songs. Then he gives the lists to other students and asks them to describe the personalities. The results are amazing; the students are brilliant at judging people from their musical taste.