Title: Negative People Are More Sensitive to Sound
Author: Harriet Jarlett
Publication: Planet Earth Online
Date: 26th March 2013
This article speaks about the correlation of an individual’s
personality and how sensitive they are to sound. Researchers from the
University of Nottingham came to the conclusion that your personality can make
you think that noises generated by micro wind turbines are louder than what
they really are. They measured the sound from small/micro wind turbines and
then spoke to the people living in these urban areas. Results showed that
people that had a negative outlook were more prone to thinking the wind
turbines we’re loud, while those that were more optimistic reported that they
barely, in some cases not at all, heard the sound.
Professor Carol Eastwick asked the participants to rank the
different noises that they heard. The experiment included different words such
as humming, beating, whistling and the individuals were also asked to explain
their views on wind turbines.
The closest correlation was that of personality and what was
heard. There was no split found between gender or age. Individuals that showed
to have a negative outlook were those that complained about feeling discomfort
and noise related symptoms such as headaches and fatigue.
Being a higher level psychology student, I personally feel like
this experiment was conducted in a proper manner. The independent and dependant
variables need to be more concentrated. Perhaps there were results that the
article did not include, but those would be a grand aid when looking at this
study. It is hard to believe that someone’s “personality” could affect what
they hear. A person’s “personality” can not be generalized to the way they act
in one day. Maybe the person was having a rough day or those that seemed upset
or aggravated were simply the ones that lived closest to the wind turbines?
Many other factors need to be considered before making such a generalization.
No comments:
Post a Comment