If the woman on the treadmill next to you in the gym is having an interminable call with her boyfriend, you could try focusing on something else. “There is only me and the stationary bike. I am one with the stationary bike. I hear nothing but the whirring of the gears. I sense nothing but the pumping of my blood.” That might work.
You could take the Zinedine Zidane approach and head-butt the person on the cell phone—that might make you feel better, until you get arrested. Maybe just thinking about doing it will help ease your irritation.
Or you could adopt the attitude of the Ifaluk islanders and simply accept the annoyance, realize that it’s an inherent component of the social milieu in which you find yourself, and move on. You could try that.
You could try all of those things, but based on our extensive research, none of these strategies works that well. They might make you feel better momentarily, but the things that bug us do so in a way that transcends reason. You know that your reaction to this minor unpleasantness is out of proportion, yet you can’t help but get annoyed. And once you’re annoyed about being annoyed, it’s all over. This is terminal annoyance.
So, as a last-ditch effort, remember that bad feelings—on the whole—usually aren’t so bad. They signal that something is wrong, which throws into relief that things usually aren’t. If overhearing an annoying halfalogue is your biggest problem, buy some earplugs and be thankful.
Acknowledgments
Long acknowledgments are annoying. Brace yourself.
We are grateful for the many people who took the time to talk with us during this project. You can see their names scattered throughout this book. We would particularly like to thank Robert Hogan and Paul Connolly for their help with developing a scientifically credibly annoyingness test; Linda Bartoshuk for her interest in scaling annoyingness; Carol Tavris for her helpful suggestions; Chris Joyce, Sarah Brookhart, Janet Zipser, Corey Dean, Erik Tarloff, Sandy Blakeslee, Alta Charo, and Michael Lemonick for contributing stories about what annoyed them; and Sarah Varney for her wonderful research on cultural annoyances.
F. L. is grateful for the mentorship and generous support of Ira Flatow, her boss at Science Friday, and the intelligent guidance of Annette Heist, the show’s senior producer. J. P. thanks his NPR editors Alison Richards and Anne Gudenkauf for their support. He also would like to thank NPR president Vivian Schiller for her enthusiasm about this project.
We also gratefully acknowledge the encouragement and support of our agent, Jim Levine, and his colleagues and staff at Levine Greenberg.
This book would never have happened without Eric Nelson, our editor at Wiley. A few years ago, he e-mailed J. P. out of the blue asking if he’d like to write a book. “No,” J. P. replied without a moment’s hesitation. Eric evidently had a better crystal ball on his desk than J. P. did.
That brings us to a paragraph that’s hard to write in the third person, so Joe will take it from here. This book was Flora’s idea. People who know me have trouble believing that, because for some reason, most of my coworkers, friends, and certainly my immediate family believe that I have more practical knowledge about how to be annoying than anyone they’ve ever met. But Flora has had many interesting, provocative, clever ideas in the time that I’ve known her, and this book was one of them. She was kind enough to let me write it with her.
Many friends deserve thanks for their interest and positive feedback: Doris Palca, Soji Adeyi, Gaby Newes-Adeyi, Claire Wyman, Roland Kanaar, Bob O’Rourke, and Kim Darnell.
I was lucky enough to have two splendid fellowships while this book was being planned and written. I was science writer in residence for six months at the Huntington Library and Botanical Garden, where I was able to pester the staff with annoying questions. Special thanks to Huntington president Steve Koblik (who I think has finally forgiven me for failing to catch an egregious spelling error when I “proof read” one of his books), Dan Lewis, Roy Ritchie, Susan Turner-Lowe, and most especially Laurie Sowd.
The other fellowship was as a visiting media scholar at the Hoover Institution, where I spent an extremely productive week on probably the most unusual project ever pursued at that institution. Thanks to Henry Miller, Mandy MacCalla, and David Brady.
I would like to thank my children, Sam and Jacob, for putting up with their annoying father, and my wife, Kathy Hudson, who had an unconventional but nonetheless effective way of helping me write this book. I’m extremely grateful for her love.
Index
absolute pitch
allergens, social
Altman, Neil
amae (Japanese emotion)
Americans
annoyances
annoying behaviors to other cultures
pace of life
time perception
amnesia
amplitude envelope
amygdala
Anderson, Alun
Anderson, Karen
anger
annoyances
biological processes
brain processes in healthy people
bugs as
categories of
cell phones
coping with
cultural differences
definition of
in dreams
evolutionary theory
genetic factors
“good annoyance”-utility tradeoff
hedonic reversal theory
Huntington’s patients
measurement of
of mice
“out of order” things and situations
philosopher’s account
primate studies
in relationships
research issues
smells
social rule breaking
stress and
trash talk in sports
See also noise annoyances
Annoy-a-tron
anterior cingulate cortex
antidepressants
Aoyagi, Mark
Aron, Arthur
Aronson, Elliot
arrogance
Association of Japanese Private Railways
autism
aversion
Balents, Leon
Bartoshuk, Linda
basal ganglia
baseball “Bug Game”
bed bugs
benign masochism
Blake, Randolph
bleeps and blips
Block, Eric
Bloom, Paul
bonobos
brain
Huntington’s disease deterioration
limbic system’s role in annoyance processing
research
Brazil, pace of life in
Briggs, Jean
Brookhart, Sarah
Brosnan, Sarah
bugs
capuchins
cars
Carstens, Earl
cell phones
cerebral cortex
Chabris, Christopher
chalkboard, fingernails-on- sound
Chamberlain, Joba
Chapman, Hanah
Chemical and Engineering News
chemical ecology
Chemical Educator
chemical nociception
children
chili peppers
chimpanzees
China, plagiarism in
cingulate cortex
cingulotomy
Cleveland Indians, “Bug Game”
cochlea
cognitive restructuring
Cohen, Ron
collectivist cultures
colorblindness
Columbus, Christopher
Conmy, Benjamin
Connolly, Paul
consonance
context
conversations, on cell phones