What Does Your Email Signature Say About You?

Though I didn't end up directly pursuing a career in the field I received my bachelor's degree in (psychology), I still have a great fondness for learning more about the mind and human behavior. Currently, I am reading a fascinating book by Sam Gosling, Ph.D. called "Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You" and I just finished a section that I thought would be fun to share (and see if you can figure out) which includes a segment where he discusses email signature quotations. I found it rather pertinent, because I just discussed my own email signature in this blog.

In this chapter about identity, Dr. Gosling writes about various email signatures that he has collected over the years from his email correspondence. Below are eight of those quotes, followed by a list of the people who sent the emails. Can you match up the quotes to the mailers, based on a short descriptive of each? After you try your hand at guessing, leave your own email signature as a comment. If you don't have a signature, what quote WOULD you use if you did?

Quotes

• A. "An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity." - MLK, Jr.

• B. "Solutions that ignore causation solve nothing."

• C. "There are two primary choices in life: to accept conditions as they exist, or accept the responsibility for changing them."

• D. "You know, it's a small world ... but I wouldn't want to have to paint it." - Steven Wright

• E. "There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest."

• F. "Basic psychology is one of my subroutines." - A. Schwarzenegger as T3

• G. "The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams." - Eleanor Roosevelt

• H. "I'll play it first and tell you what it is later." - Miles Davis

Now match these people to their email signature quotes:

• 1. A police officer

• 2. A graduate student interested in evolutionary explanations for human behavior

• 3. A nerdy computer technician

• 4. The director of an Hispanic research center

• 5. A professor of animal behavior known for taking giant imaginative intellectual leaps

• 6. An undergraduate student hoping to be admitted to Dr. Gosling's Ph.D. program

• 7. A psychology professor

• 8. A low-ranking person in an organization who had just taken the plunge and sent out an email to the whole organization detailing a superior's sexual misconduct

**Don't click below until you want to see the answers**

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