Popular expressions
LOL ... Cray cray ... Lean in ...
Impactful ... Man up ...
My bad ... Fake news ...
Could care less ... Woke ...
“It is what it is.”Foods
Stinky cheese ... Okra
... Pizza with pineapple
... Lite beer ... Cilantro ...
Black licorice ... “Pumpkin-
spiced anything.”Annoyances, Continued
ANNOYANCE IS CONTEXT-
SPECIFIC. INTERMITTENT,
UNEXPLAINED DELAYS THAT
MIGHT EXASPERATE AIRLINE
PASSENGERS ARE JUST PART
OF THE JOB FOR A PILOT.Now it could be that you read that last paragraph
and said to yourself, Wait a minute—a delayed flight
isn’t that annoying. If I have a good book to read,
I don’t mind waiting in an airport. That speaks to
another key feature of annoyance: It’s “highly context-
specific,” says Russell Shilling, the American Psycho-
logical Association’s chief scientific officer. “There
is a lot of variability between individuals and cul-
tures.” For example: The same kind of intermittent,
unexplained delays that might exasperate airline
passengers are just part of the job for a pilot.
As for an example of annoyances varying by cul-
ture: If a U.S. family visits a beach with only one other
family present, they’ll tend to throw down their tow-
els a discreet distance away. In some Mediterranean
countries, plopping down right next door is the norm,
but that would cause many Americans to seethe.
Shilling says individual variability is one reason
it’s so hard to tease out the universal properties of
annoyances. But that individuality may be useful in
certain settings. A psychiatrist friend of mine notes
that while her patients may be reluctant to talk about
their private dark thoughts, they have no problem rail-
ing about the people and situations that annoy them.
Encouraging people to share their annoyances could
be an easier way to open a window into their psyches.AN INTRIGUING THING about annoyances is how
they appear to change over time. A decade ago, our
research led us to conclude that one of the most
annoying things in the world was listening to some-
one else’s loud cell phone conversation. We hypoth-
esized that the reason it was so annoying is that
our brains are naturally predisposed to painting a
complete picture of reality, but when you only hear
half of a conversation, that’s not possible.
Then, cell phone conversations seemed annoying
only to the people not on the phone. Today it’s the call
recipients that seem to be getting annoyed. I’m not
talking about receiving a robocall. I’m talking about
the 20-something who recently told me that an unex-
pected 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 to ask if you could call ...
If there are some things in life that are universally
annoying, human physiology may provide clues tohelp us define them. We have a variety of reflexes
that kick in to protect us from truly dangerous stim-
uli. Gagging could prevent us from ingesting some-
thing that’s potentially poisonous. The blink reflex
protects our eyeball if an object is heading toward it.
There’s even something called the middle-ear mus-
cle reflex that protects our eardrums from damage
from truly loud noises.
The reason someone with a cloying cologne is
annoying may derive from the gag reflex. Likewise
our response to a vuvuzela, that deafening plastic
horn, may be a vestige of our natural protections
from any loud noise.
Another place to look for clues to the fundamen-
tal nature of annoyance is to study people with
conditions that make them particularly prone to
annoyances. Just as studying people with hyper-
cholesterolemia—dangerously high cholesterol—led
to the first drugs for lowering cholesterol, so might
studying people with the disorder misophonia lead
to ways to help keep us from becoming annoyed.
According to the National Institutes of Health’s
Genetic and Rare Diseases Information Center, peo-
ple with misophonia have an extreme emotional
response to sounds that others find innocuous. Just
hearing someone breathe or yawn or chew a potato
chip can generate severe agitation in susceptible
individuals. If researchers find more ways to calm
those people, there may be some benefit for all of us.IN THE DECADE SINCE the book came out, I’ve thought
a lot about what makes people, things, and situations
annoying, and what any of us might do to inoculate
ourselves against becoming annoyed. The answer’s
actually surprisingly simple: All you have to do is
Editor’s Note: The contract for this article set a strict word limit.
The writer exceeded the limit; the magazine feels obliged to
enforce it. We regret any annoyance this might cause, dear readers.EXPLORE | THE BIG IDEA
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