It's a safe bet that everyone reading this has been or will be annoyed at some point today. And what's really annoying is how often you can't explain why something bothers you.
Introducing Annoying: The Science of What Bugs Us
Will all of this make the world less irritating? No, but you can have a smug and satisfied moment of peace while you read.
The sound of fingernails on a chalkboard, annoying universally, may trigger a vestigial response to the sound made by a prehistoric predator
Sounds, how and why they annoy, provide some of the more basic ideas behind annoyance. Why? There seems to be more consensus, which means science has a better chance of arriving at some kind of conclusion. In fact, when subjects are asked to rate noises for annoyance, the number one annoying noise, across the board, was the sound of finger nails across a chalkboard.
While science can't pinpoint why this noise among so many is one of the universal triggers, theories, of course, abound, as in the vestigial reflex. We can, however, enjoy the idea of the world joining hands around a common peeve.
Sirens use a rapid change in amplitude, designed to distress the human ear, to make us get the hell out of the way
The shift in amplitude is called roughness and the greater it is, the more difficult it is to tune out.
The art of siren development reveals one of the many things we know about why certain sounds annoy. This allows musicologists to remove what is annoying - middle frequencies, it turns out - or make them more so.
We succumb to trash talk or the annoyance of other uncontrollable sounds because we can't make it stop
We understand the power of trash talk through the study of bugs. They teach us about irritations not in our control, like the mosquito buzzing in your ear. That is when annoyance, to some extent, becomes the only recourse and go there (at least some of us), we do.
Some people can learn to tune the buzzing (of man or bug) out, others simply can't and never will. We can see evidence of this scientific truth on playing fields and courts every day.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
Please follow Business Insider on Twitter and Facebook.
See Also:
- The Stupidest Drivers In America Live In Washington D.C.
- The 10 Most Freedom-Loving States In America
- MAP OF THE DAY: If The Entire World Lived In A City As Dense As Houston, It Would Be This Big
AMERICA SERVICE GROUP, INC. FACTSET RESEARCH SYSTEMS, INC. INTERDIGITAL COMMUNICATIONS CORPORATION ECLIPSYS CORPORATION TRIQUINT SEMICONDUCTOR, INC. EMULEX CORPORATION FORMFACTOR, INC. METHODE ELECTRONICS, INC. MICROSEMI CORPORATION EPICOR SOFTWARE CORPORATION
No comments:
Post a Comment