A year-long quest to identify the worst sound in the world ended with top honours going to the backdrop of a market town in Britain on a Saturday night: a person vomiting.
The sound won out over fingers being dragged down a blackboard, a dentist’s drill and wailing babies in an online study that drew 1,1-million votes from around the world.
Microphone feedback, crying babies and the scrapes and squeaks of a train on a track ranked second and joint third, with a cat howling and mobile phone ringtones coming joint 12th and snoring an unexpectedly low 26th.
The study, set up by Trevor Cox, a professor of acoustics at Salford University, sought opinions on 34 sounds at the website www.sound101.org in the hope of learning what makes certain noises so objectionable.
‘If, as engineers, we can learn what offends people then, in some cases, we may be able to engineer them out of existence,†he said.
The survey revealed a stark gender divide, with women voting 25 of the noises as more repellent than did men. Of the sounds men ranked as more distressing two were variations on babies crying.
The researchers expected sounds that evoke disgust to be near the top of the list, such as vomiting, coughing and spitting. Revulsion to such sounds is partly governed by culture and partly an evolutionary legacy that helps us avoid picking up diseases.
In general, horrible sounds became worse as people aged, but for some sounds the picture was more complex. The sound of eating an apple revolted people less as they aged. The sound of a dentist’s drill ranked worst among the under-10s and those in their 40s to 50s.
Some scientists have tried to explain widespread shudders at nails being dragged down a blackboard as a historical reflex to the similar-sounding screech made when monkeys alert others to impending danger. But the sound ranked 16th, suggesting the noise has less effect than expected. —