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Two crackerjack science journalists from NPR look at why
some things (and some people!) drive us crazy
It happens everywhere?offices, schools, even your own
backyard. Plus, seemingly anything can trigger it?cell
phones, sirens, bad music, constant distractions, your boss,
or even your spouse. We all know certain things get under our
skin. Can science explain why? Palca and Lichtman take you on
a scientific quest through psychology, evolutionary biology,
anthropology, and other disciplines to uncover the truth
about being annoyed. What is the recipe for annoyance? For
starters, it should be temporary, unpleasant, and
unpredictable, like a boring meeting or mosquito bites
- Gives fascinating, surprising explanations for why people
react the way they do to everything from chili peppers to
fingernails on a blackboard
- Explains why irrational behavior (like tearing your hair
out in traffic) is connected to worthwhile behavior (like
staying on task)
- Includes tips for identifying your own irritating habits!
How often can you say you're happily reading a really
Annoying book? The insights are fascinating, the exploration
is fun, and the knowledge you gain, if you act like you know
everything, can be really annoying.
From the Authors: What Annoys
You?
Consider the following story, posted on the Ghana News
website on February 11, 2011:
Annoying 'alarm' was missing parrot
A woman who complained a 'fire alarm' had been sounding
non-stop for seven days has discovered the noise was
made by a missing parrot.
Shanna Sexton, 25, said she was "pushed to the edge" by
the high-pitched tone and even called in workmen to try
and locate the problem. But the mystery was solved when
she finally spotted the African Grey Congo parrot
perched on a water butt as she hung out washing in the
garden. The noisy parrot, called Sammi, had escaped
from neighbor Louise Ledger's house a week earlier and
spent seven days in the garden mimicking a smoke
alarm.
Miss Sexton, from Torquay, Devon, said: "I'd been
hearing the noise for ages. I looked around the house
checking everything. I even pulled out the washing
machine. "In the end a workman said it sounded like it
may be my smoke alarm. We had problems with our smoke
alarm before and I thought 'here we go again'. It was
driving me mad but I just could not find out where it
was coming from."
|
This could well be the quintessential story
highlighting what science can tell about why things are
annoying. It captures the three U’s. Unpredictable, unpleasant
and of uncertain duration.
Unpredictable: Ms. Sexton couldn’t tell when the noise would
occur. Every so often Sammi would let loose with the
high-pitched squeal of a smoke alarm, but if his schedule for
shrieking wasn’t truly random, at least it was known only to
him.
Unpleasant: A smoke alarm is designed to be unpleasant. If
smoke detectors made a sound like tinkling chimes or chirping
birds, we would simply ignore it. No, the idea is to get you up
off the couch to shut off that annoying racket before you are
engulfed in flames.
Uncertain duration: The reason Ms. Sexton was “pushed to the
edge” was there was no way of knowing when the sound would
stop. After each screech ended, she must sure have said to
herself, “that’s got to be the last one,” only to find to her
dismay it wasn’t.
With Ms. Sexton’s troubles in mind, we asked a few of our
colleagues, at NPR and beyond, what annoys them.
Christopher Joyce, NPR Science Correspondent
My personal most annoying annoyance is worse than yours. It's
worse than anybody's. You know why? Because it nails me when
I'm asleep. You, you can be annoyed all day long but you can go
to bed at night knowing that except for a noisy neighbor or his
dog, or a mosquito in the air, or a lumpy bed, you've escaped
the daily mine-field of annoyance. Not me.
No, when I go to bed, I enter the annoyed man's nightmare--the
recurring dream. The details change but the theme is always the
same. I'm trying to get somewhere important. I'm trying to
catch a plane, and time is running out. Trying to get to a
meeting or a class on time. Trying to find a bathroom,
urgently, of course. Worst of all, trying to rendezvous with a
beautiful woman. Oh, yes, that's when it's most annoying.
Because what happens, every time, is that something keeps me
from getting there. I'm driving and I get lost. My cab driver
stops to get lunch and disappears. There's an accident on the
freeway. The public toilets are under repair and out of
service. Once there was an earthquake and I had to get out of a
car and walk (I think that was a woman-rendezvous dream).
At first, I struggle diligently to find an alternate
route--after all, I'm a responsible person, at least in my
dreams. I hail down another cab, book another flight. But soon
enough it dawns on me that whatever I do is hopeless. I am
foiled, again and again. Sorry, flights canceled due to bad
weather. Road work ahead. Bridge down. Detour.
Now, I've traveled a lot in my life, all over the place, in war
zones and Amazonian rainforests and Tibetan highlands and on
rickshaws and in dugout canoes. I KNOW about washed out bridges
and drunken bus drivers and chain-smoking customs agents who'll
wait days until you come up with the bribe. My subconscious is
LOADED with examples with which to impale a traveler like a
butterfly pinned to a patch of felt.
Eventually, I reach a stage of weary acceptance. I'm not going
to make it to my destination. I realize I'm in that dream
again, I'm asleep, and that jerk who lives somewhere in my head
is doing this on purpose, writing the script as I sleep, making
sure that whatever clever solution I come up, he'll trump it.
And there's nothing I can do because that jerk is me...the
annoying me, annoying me. Gotta go now...got a plane to
catch.
Sandra Blakeslee, coauthor, Sleight of Mind
One of the things that truly irritates me is my local NPR
station's broadcast of All Things Considered. The NPR content
is excellent but the local "anchor" has the worst news delivery
style I have ever heard. Her voice drives me crazy. I have to
turn down the sound whenever she starts talking. Equally
irritating is the fact that this station has been running the
same "ads" (restaurant, physicians etc who pay to tout their
support) for what feels like years. Another woman with a
chipmunk voice (almost as bad as the news person) says the same
things over and over and over and over and over and over. I
think one tunes in to the news programs for novelty. When the
station never changes it's between NPR segment content, it
makes me want to scream. Bottom line, I guess the annoying
things are the bad radio voices and the repetition. I will try
to think of more examples (I probably don't have to mention the
torture of going to the US Post office to get anything
accomplished.)
Cornelia Dean, Science Reporter, the New York
Times
What makes me crazy is people saying less when they mean fewer,
loan when they mean lend, etc. Then I am annoyed at myself for
objecting to what are, in effect, real life examples of some of
the features that have made English the irresistible language
of the world -- its mutability and immunity to the dictates of
any "academy."
Sarah Brookhart, Deputy Director, Association for
Psychological Science
For me, public transportation is teeming with annoyances. Like
bacteria on the handrails, the loud one-sided phone
conversations about what to have for dinner are part of the
deal when you’re in a subway car at rush hour. Put on
headphones and tune it out. But I could probably ignore a
colony of deadly microbes more easily than I can ignore the guy
sitting next to me clipping his fingernails. Cranking up the
iPod doesn’t help. Time stands still. Agonizing suspense after
each clip. Has he stopped? Or will there be another click of
the teeny guillotine? Then, that unmistakable sound, and a
half-moon sliver sails through the air in slow-motion. Worse, I
can see it land on the arm of the woman across the aisle; she
has no clue, but my skin is crawling with disgust. Sarah
Brookhart
R. Alta Charo, Warren P. Knowles Professor of Law and
Bioethics, the University of Wisconsin at Madison
“Thank you for choosing Company, Inc. Para la información en
español, diga el español o marque el número 2.” There is
absolutely nothing annoying about the offer to handle my
business in Spanish. What does make me crazy is the certain
knowledge that everything after this, whether in English,
Spanish or Esperanto, will also involve pressing keys to select
from among inappropriate choices, with a less than even chance
that after four or five or ten such selections I will actually
get to a person. Come to think of it, even getting to a person
is annoying, as almost every time they then ask me to recite
all the information I’ve been punching in. (“Using your
telephone keypad, please enter your ten digit telephone number,
starting with the area code.”). First, don’t their computer
screens already show them this information? Second, why ask for
it when the odds are better than 3-1 that the live person
finally talking on the phone doesn’t have answers more
individualized than the automated phone system or on-line FAQs?
I know! Why not have every company simply send me the training
manual for their customer (non)service representatives, and I
can just select from the standardized answers and recite them
to myself, without the bother of pressing all those keys? I can
recite to myself “I apologize for the wait. My call is
important to me. Please hold and I will be with me in a
moment.” What’s really great about this solution is that I am
indeed the representative. So not only do I know I am busy
(probably doing email while on-hold) but I can choose precisely
which moment I will choose to answer my own call! The maddening
uncertainty of the waiting, the irritating not- knowing how
many keys I’ll be pressing, all this is magically erased.