96 pages

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Je m'inscris

Annoying , livre ebook

Turner Publishing Company - Flora Lichtman , Joe Palca

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96 pages

English

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Description

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.
A Note from the Authors.

Introduction: Cell Phones.

1 A Noise Annoys.

2 A Case of Mistaken Intensity.

3 Fingernails on a Chalkboard.

4 Skunked.

5 Bugged by Bugs An Epic Bugging”

6 Who Moved Their Cheese?

7 The Terror of Perfect Pitch.

8 Dissonant.

9 Breaking the Rules.

10 He’s Just Not That Annoyed by You.

11 Better Late Than Never Doesn’t Apply Here.

12 When Your Mind Becomes a Foreign Country.

13 The Annoyed Brain.

14 False Alarms.

Conclusion.

Acknowledgments.

Notes.

Index.

Sujets

Social Psychology

Physiological Psychology

Sociologie, société et politique

Emotions (álbum)

Joe Palca

Annoyance

Psychology

Emotion

National Public Radio

Emotions

Informations

Publié par	Turner Publishing Company
Date de parution	25 mars 2011
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781118028117
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0750€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
A Note from the Authors
Introduction: Cell Phones
1: A Noise Annoys
2: A Case of Mistaken Intensity
3: Fingernails on a Chalkboard
4: Skunked
5: Bugged by Bugs: An Epic Bugging
6: Who Moved Their Cheese?
7: The Terror of Perfect Pitch
8: Dissonant
9: Breaking the Rules
10: He’s Just Not That Annoyed by You
11: Better Late Than Never Doesn’t Apply Here
12: When Your Mind Becomes a Foreign Country
13: The Annoyed Brain
14: False Alarms
Conclusion
Acknowledgments
Notes
Introduction: Cell Phones
2. A Case of Mistaken Intensity
3. Fingernails on a Chalkboard
4. Skunked
5. Bugged by Bugs: An Epic Bugging
6. Who Moved Their Cheese?
8. Dissonant
9. Breaking the Rules
10. He’s Just Not That Annoyed by You
11. Better Late Than Never Doesn’t Apply Here
12. When Your Mind Becomes a Foreign Country
13. The Annoyed Brain
14. False Alarms
Index

Copyright © 2011 by Joe Palca and Flora Lichtman. All rights reserved
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey Published simultaneously in Canada
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, fax (978) 646-8600, or on the web at www.copyright.com . Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748-6011, fax (201) 748-6008, or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions .
Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and the author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor the author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.
For general information about our other products and services, please contact our Customer Care Department within the United States at (800) 762-2974, outside the United States at (317) 572-3993 or fax (317) 572-4002.
Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books. For more information about Wiley products, visit our web site at www.wiley.com .
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Palca, Joe. Annoying : the science of what bugs us / Joe Palca and Flora Lichtman. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-470-63869-9 (hardback); ISBN 978-1-118-02809-4 (ebk.); ISBN 978-1-118-02810-0 (ebk.); ISBN 978-1-118-02811-7 (ebk.) 1. Aversive stimuli—Physiological effect. 2. Aversion—Psysiological aspects. 3. Neuropsychology. 4. Discontent. 5. Human physiology. I. Lichtman, Flora. Title. QP401.P35 2011 612.8—dc22 2010054046
To our families
A Note from the Authors
The trouble with investigating the science of annoyance is that unlike simple topics such as string theory or molecular genetics, the science of what’s annoying is highly complex, drawing on multiple disciplines from physics, chemistry, and biology in the natural sciences to psychology, sociology, anthropology, and linguistics in the social sciences to history, literature, philosophy, and art in the humanities.
Indeed, the expert in annoyingness, if such a person existed, would be a true polymath. Of course, we all have some expertise in the sensation—both in generating it in others and feeling it within ourselves. In fact, when you tell somebody you’re writing a book about the science of what’s annoying—after you get the guffaws out of the way—you often hear a long diatribe about the annoying thing that happened just the other day. It’s paradoxical—we don’t like being annoyed but seem to enjoy thinking about what annoys us. Although everyone can tell you what’s annoying, few, if any, can explain why. That’s why we turned to science.
It may seem like a trivial pursuit, but think about it for a moment. Feeling annoyed seems to be a universal trait. Can you think of anyone who is immune to it? Although as a species modern humans appear to have become exquisitely sensitive to annoyances, other species look to be at risk as well. While animal behaviorists and microbiologists may disagree with the terminology, it’s difficult to argue with the statement that at least something remarkably similar to annoyance occurs across a broad swath of the animal kingdom. Older dogs become annoyed with pesky puppies; fruit flies are smart enough to avoid irritants; even bacteria will switch on their flagellums and move away when faced with the microbiological equivalent of fingernails on a blackboard. In the great tradition of reductionism, understanding these annoyances will surely tell us something about our own.
Although little direct research has been conducted on the topic, there’s no shortage of relevant data: science has a lot to say about annoyance. In our quest to understand this feeling, we came across some patterns that help explain what makes something annoying. Don’t expect a proof for a Grand Unified Theory of Annoyance; this is a scientific field in its infancy. We offer our findings as a place to start.
Introduction: Cell Phones
It can happen to anyone, at any time, in any place—in public bathrooms, on trains, in schools, even in your own backyard. You’re never safe. For Mark Liberman, a linguist at the University of Pennsylvania, it happened at the gym. “There was a young woman on the treadmill next to mine who was talking on her cell phone, and I was doing my best to tune it out, but she kept saying the same sentence over and over and over again. It was something like, ‘He’s arriving tomorrow.’ I think she must have said it like ten or twelve times.”
This is a classic case of cell phone annoyance. Liberman couldn’t ignore the broken record on the treadmill next to him, and that was annoying. Why? Maybe it was annoying because talking on a cell phone when you’re in a public space is rude.
Why is it rude? Lauren Emberson, a psychology graduate student who studied this, has an answer. “I think the reason why is that we can’t tune it out. We find it more rude than someone having a conversation around us because our attention is drawn in and that makes us irritated that we can’t be doing the other things or thinking about the other things that we want to. That’s why it seems intrusive.” 1
It’s an interesting idea: what we find rude is what we cannot ignore. In terms of cell phone conversations, Liberman points out that some will be harder to ignore than others—louder conversations will be more annoying, and the content of certain conversations may be more attention grabbing.
If you think it’s juicy content that keeps people tuned in to others’ cell calls, however, think again. The most mundane cell phone conversation, as Liberman found out at the gym, can be the hardest to ignore. “It was maddening because I couldn’t figure what could be going on that was causing her to repeat the same thing over and over again,” Liberman says. “It wasn’t in itself very interesting; what was attention-getting was the unexpected fact of repetition. What was the conversational setting that would lead to this?”
This perfectly embodies Emberson’s theory of what makes a cell phone conversation—which she and her coauthors dub a “halfalogue”—annoying. The repetition of the girl on the treadmill was annoying because it was distracting. It was distracting because, try as we might—and we do try—we can’t even imagine how that conversation would make any sense.
• • •
The neighborhoods nearest to the campus of the University of British Columbia at Vancouver are expensive—too expensive for students, says Emberson, who was a student there and didn’t live near campus. She lived a forty-five-minute bus ride away, which translated to a lot of commuting, which translated to a lot of reading.
When Emberson was in college, cell phones were just starting to get popular. She didn’t have one, and they annoyed her, especially on the bus. She wanted to read her essays on the philosophy of mind, but she found herself distracted by her bus-mates’ conversations. “Being an academic, I couldn’t stop at just being irritated,” she recalls. “I started thinking, ‘Why was I irritated?’ I couldn’t tune it out, and I used to think it was because I was nosy. But I actually didn’t want to listen. I felt myself forced to, almost. For most people, that’s not enough to go and do a study about it.” It was for Emberson, though, who is now at Cornell University. She devised a study to test her hypothesis on why cell phone conversations are so irritating. 2
Everyone is annoyed by something. Many of us are annoyed by lots of things. Most of these annoyances have more to do with our personal sensitivities—our neuroses, our upbringings, our points of view—than any objective “annoying” quality. Other annoyances are so powerful, however, that they transcend race, gender, age, and culture. At the top of the list is that most convenient of modern conveniences, the cell phone—at least, when someone else is talking on it.
Researchers at the