Whining Ranks the Most Hated and Annoying Sound Distraction

by hearit

For those who hate whiners--and feel like the sound grates on a last nerve--you're not alone. It's been proven: A study says the power of whining in even simple distractions, like doing simple math, is even more annoying than anyy other sounds including a power saw and the horrendous baby-talk spewed by parents.
 
Parents or not, people hate whining.
 
It's called "WHINES, CRIES, AND MOTHERESE: THEIR RELATIVE POWER TO DISTRACT" and results are being published in the Journal of Social, Evolutionary and Cultural Society.
 
The study's co-author on whiners, Rosemarie Sokol Chang -- professor of psychology at SUNY New Paltz -- says: “You’re basically doing less work and doing it worse when you’re listening to the whines. It doesn’t matter if you’re a man or a woman, everybody’s equally distracted.” The study into whining required people to do mathematical subtraction problems while listening to an infant crying, regular speech, silence, whining, a high-pitched table saw and what is dubbed “motherese” -- the baby talk adults can find highly irritating to hear.
 
To avoid bias in the words used themselves, the study used foreign language. People made more mistakes in math when subjected to whining than any of the other speech patterns or noise distractions.
 
If it's all not fair that whining is worse than a buzz-saw or baby-talk, go tell someone else about it.

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