New Close-up B2 Unit 1 Jump for Joy

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Why do we get annoyed?

Imagine you’re waiting for a bus. You’re wondering what time it’s coming, but you can’t check the timetable because there isn’t one. The person next to you at the bus stop is having a loud phone conversation. Another person is noisily eating something that smells awful. When the bus finally arrives, it’s absolutely packed. The noisy eater pushes his way onto the bus ahead of you, even though he arrived at the bus stop after you. Then, your phone rings – a friend has decided this is the perfect time for a chat. While you’re distracted, the bus doors shut and it leaves without you. Now you’re going to be seriously late. For most people, some of the examples in this situation would be really irritating. But why? Let’s look more closely at these examples and consider three reasons why they might be annoying.

For something to be annoying, it must be unpleasant without actually being dangerous. A fly moving around the room you’re in is irritating, but it isn’t really harmful.

It needs to be unpredictable. If you’re in a place with no WiFi, it may bother you at first. Over time, though, you get used to being offline – and you may even enjoy it. Yet when the WiFi keeps coming and going, it upsets you each time.

You don’t know when it’s going to end. A bus that’s delayed for ten minutes is tolerable. A bus that’s delayed with no information about how long begins to get extremely annoying.

What annoys you also depends on the context and your culture. If you grew up in a place with reliable electricity, water supplies and public transport, even a small interruption could annoy you.

If, on the other hand, you’ve never taken such things for granted, you’ll be less annoyed when they don’t work. Similarly, when an American family visits a beach, they’ll tend to put down their towels a good distance away from other families. In some Mediterranean countries, it’s normal to sit next to another family, which might make many Americans furious.

What bugs us also seems to change over time. A decade ago, according to research, one of the most annoying things in the world was listening to someone else’s loud phone conversation. Researchers believed that it was annoying because our brains try to build up a complete picture of what’s happening around us, but that’s not possible when we only hear half of a conversation. Hearing half of another person's conversation still annoys a lot of people, but today some people also get annoyed when they receive a call. A young person recently told me that an unexpected call, even from a close friend, is annoying. The thinking seems to be, ‘Why call when a text will do?’ Or even, ‘You should have texted first to ask if you could call …’.

Some people have conditions that make them very sensitive to things that other people just find a bit irritating. For example, misophonia is a medical condition that causes people to respond to ordinary sounds in an extreme or emotional way. Just hearing someone yawn or chew food can drive them crazy. Researchers might be able to find ways to help people suffering from misophonia. If so, there may be some benefit for all of us.

Until then, can science prevent the rest of us from getting upset by irritating things? The answer, annoyingly, is ‘no’.