July 26, 2006
Why do others' cell phone ring tones annoy us so?
According to a survey by US Ranstad, 30 percent of employees say the ringing of their co-workers' cell phones is their greatest annoyance of the workday, reports the Chicago Tribune.
"Considering all the sounds we encounter in a typical day -- clacking keyboards, conversations, traditional telephones -- what is it about a ringing cell phone that jars us so?
Diana Deutsch and Trevor Henthorn, researchers in the psychology department at University of California at San Diego, wonder if the so-called "earworm effect" is the culprit. Unlike the typical brrring! of the conventional phone, the song snippets of many ringtones insidiously wend their way into our heads.
... Perhaps cell phone sounds are still so new and varied that we've yet to absorb them into our mental vocabulary of everyday sounds, so they simply don't blend into our environment."
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