Ghastly nails on a blackboard or deafening sires don’t come any close to a infant’s whining as far as annoying sounds are concerned, according to a recent study from SUNY New Paltz.

In a fairly simple approach, researchers asked study participants to solve various math problems while a background noise was playing. Six sounds were chosen, namely screeching saw on wood, machine noise, a baby crying, the always annoying adult mimicking baby talk and, of course, whining, for a whole minute each. The highest scores were received by noises which lead to the most errors in computations.

Interestingly enough, the whining sound was voiced by an adult actor.

Subjects chosen for the study were both male and female, parents and non-parents. The results were posted in the The results, published in the Journal of Social, Evolutionary and Cultural Psychology, where they researchers concluded that “you are basically doing less work and doing it worse” when listening to whines.

Speaking to MSNBC, Rosemarie Sokol Chang, a psychologist involved in the study, said: “It’s telling you to tune in. Nobody wants to sit around and listen to a fire engine siren either, but if you hear the siren go off, it gets your attention. It has to be annoying like that, and it’s the same with the whine.”

Ignoring the noise won’t help one bit, either. Researchers say that only makes it worse.

What’s the most annoying sound in the world for you guys?

via Wired

Enjoyed this article? Join 40,000+ subscribers to the ZME Science newsletter. Subscribe now!