Here at Boing Boing, we've discussed misophonia — also known as "sound rage" or, as this article in the journal PLOS ONE (Public Library of Science) describes it, "a disorder characterized by a disproportionate emotional response to everyday sounds" — several times in the past, detailing the stress it can cause for those suffering from it, the severe strain it can put on relationships, and the brain mirroring mechanism that activates it. An article in the journal bioRxiv defines misophonia as a "condition in which specific sounds cause an intense, aversive response in individuals, characterized by negative emotions and autonomic arousal" and explains that the most common triggers for people suffering from misophonia are "bodily sounds related to chewing and eating as well as other repetitive sounds." Research shows, though, that aversion to such sounds varies and often depends on whether the creature making the noises is human or animal!
If you have misophonia or know anyone with it, you probably know through your own experience that while you might be triggered by the sounds of humans chewing, breathing, and more, those very same noises in animals don't necessarily bother you. On the contrary, you might find human chewing absolutely disgusting but love the sound of animals crunching away. I know this is definitely my experience — I want to banish any human within earshot who is making gross eating noises, but I can watch and listen to animals-eating-things ASMR videos all day long.
The research reported in the article in bioRxiv referenced above, titled, "Context influences how individuals with misophonia respond to sounds," confirmed that people are more triggered by human noises than animal noises. What's really interesting to me, though, is the huge role perception plays in what we find triggering. The researchers found that when the people in their study didn't know the source of the sound, they were more triggered by the sounds they guessed were human, even if their guesses were wrong. They were also more triggered by sounds described by the researchers incorrectly as human, even if the sound was actually from an animal. The researchers explain:
We showed that in the absence of any contextual information (such as text description or video), whether or not a participant correctly guessed a sound's source (and specifically what they thought the sound was when they didn't guess correctly), played a role in how aversive they rated that sound to be. Block 2 showed a similar finding, where correct or incorrect text descriptions provided prior to each sound (and whether or not participants believed these descriptions), influenced how aversive participants found those sounds to be.
Thus the research concluded that:
The aversive stimulus is more than just a sound and can be thought of as a Gestalt of features which includes sound as a necessary component as well as additional contextual information. In this study, we explore how contextual information influences misophonic responses to human chewing, as well as sonically similar sounds produced by non-human sources. The current study revealed that the exact same sound can be perceived as being much more or less aversive depending on the contextual information presented alongside the auditory information . . .
The findings from our experiment . . . show that while sound source is indeed an important factor in the misophonic response, an individual's perception of a sound's source is enough to influence how they respond to that sound.
Read the full article here.
Previously:
• How misophonia, aka 'sound rage,' can destroy relationships
• Your brain isn't broken: That murderous rage over chewing sounds has a name
• Scientists uncover the real reason why loud eaters and mouth breathers gross us out
• The sound of horses crunching carrots is so satisfying!
