So many things in life make people scratch their heads, such as unexplained natural phenomena, for instance, or something that requires extremely specific knowledge. However, sometimes something as simple as things in places where they don’t belong can make humans feel even more puzzled.
It often leaves us bending over backwards trying to find an explanation. Or frustrates us with how illogical it is. To the extent that it becomes surprising how much it actually bugs us. It’s likely related to the fact that it’s hard to predict why it is the way it is, and that’s one of the things that annoys people the most.
This idea was discussed by former NPR science correspondent Joe Palca and Flora Lichtman, formerly a multimedia editor for the ‘Science Friday’ podcast. On NPR’s ‘Morning Edition’, they spoke about their book, ‘Annoying: The Science of What Bugs Us’, which delves deeper into why certain things drive us out of our minds.
The authors were the ones to point out that unpredictability is one of the things that annoy us the most. They gave an example of a phone call conversation. Have you ever thought about why hearing one quite often bugs us for some reason? Well, it’s because we can’t predict what’s being said on the other side, and that pulls certain strings in our brain, which can make one of our eyes twitch uncontrollably.
Such frustrating things usually differ with each person, as we all have our own pet peeves. (For me personally, it’s loud chewing that seems to increase the number of gray hairs on my head.) For some people it can be something as common as others biting their nails, or something extra specific, such as liking your food in a certain way, for example. For quite a few people, seeing things in places they shouldn’t be can have a similar effect.
J. Palca and F. Lichtman expanded more on the topic in an article for National Geographic. They emphasized that in order for something to be annoying it has to be not only unpredictable, but intermittent as well. Imagine this: someone’s humming a song. But not in a beautiful way that makes you want to sing along. No, no. In a way that’s off-key and comes and goes based on no rhyme or reason other than the musician’s mood. That can be enough to drive someone crazy for sure.
The intermittence is frustrating because it doesn’t give you enough time to get ready for what’s coming up. If it did, you’d likely react in a less stormy way. But when whatever it is catches a person off guard, even the strongest of them are likely to cave.
In addition to being unpredictable and intermittent, it has to be harmful but not in a physically injurious way. The authors gave the example of a housefly buzzing around; it isn’t causing any physical harm, but is extremely annoying, nevertheless. I will stick to my example of humming, as—even if not actually dangerous—it can be a serious risk to one’s hearing or sanity.
According to J. Palca and F. Lichtman, another factor that adds to us losing our cool is the annoying thing persisting for an uncertain period of time. If you know that the person is only going to be humming for the next five minutes, you can brace yourself and push through it. But not having even a rough idea about when the torture is going to end makes it infinitely more difficult to bear.
Sadly, there is no one remedy for the gut-wrenching feeling of annoyance. However, on ‘Morning Edition’, J. Palca revealed a technique that might help alleviate it. Called ‘cognitive restructuring’, it encourages people to distract themselves from the source of the negative feeling.