Noisy
neighbors are always a pain. Of course we are never noisy, well, not like those
neighbors. Our music or TVs are always just loud enough for us to enjoy what’s
going on and we turn things off at a reasonable time, don’t we?
Well,
maybe so, but we’d better not ask the neighbors or they may also start
complaining about noisy neighbors. Clearly, one aspect of the problem is dense
urban dwelling, but the other aspect leads us into a wonderland of our
perceptions and perspectives.
In
order to check this out quantitatively rather than anecdotally, Desantis et al have done some experiments and
their data hit the sidewalks yesterday in PLoS ONE (1).
They
signed up a dozen young people for a price of €10 per hour to press a button
when a hand on a clock got to their name. There was another person, who they
thought was also a participant, whose name also appeared on the clock face but
on a different part. The trick was that when they pressed the button a buzzer
might or might not go off. There were significant apparent arbitrary delays
built in, so that the participant had an added element of uncertainty.
They
then had to listen to a sound that they were clearly certain that the other
person had generated so that they could gauge the loudness of theirs against.
With a variety of delays and levels of sound they had to think quite hard.
Of
course, social and cognitive scientists don’t usually play fair and the sounds
that they thought the other person had generated was one that they had. The
authors are triumphant in that they say that if we think we are the originator
of the noise, however unpleasant, we are convinced that we were quieter than
when that other person was responsible.
Clearly,
it always our noisy neighbors who are at fault. We rest our case.
