While no one really wants to hear someone slurping out loudly while drinking or making annoying sounds while they chew their food, there are actually people who find these things extremely annoying. If you are one of those people who are really annoyed by the sound of chewing, then you might be a creative genius! And that’s backed up by a scientific study.
Researchers from Northwestern University in Illinois found that people who are extremely annoyed or are hypersensitive to certain sounds, such as chewing, are more creative than those who don’t really mind the sounds.
Darya Zabelina, a Ph.D. psychology student at Northwestern University in Illinois, and her team conducted a test on 100 people. They tested these subjects’ ability to find original solutions to certain problems. They discovered that there is a strong link between a person’s level of annoyance to irrelevant audio stimuli and creativity.
During the study, the participants were given solutions to certain scenarios. They are, then, given the challenge of trying to think of as many original answers as possible. To test their level of tolerance to annoying noise and their ability to find creative solutions to the problems, participants were subjected to background auditory stimuli while answering the test.
Surprisingly, the people who were more affected by the sounds were actually the ones who had higher scores in terms of creativity. The researchers published the results of their study on scientific journal, Neuropsychologia. They suggested that even if these people were greatly annoyed by the noise, they were able to think creatively, thanks to their ability to focus on a wide range of things at the same time.
“If funneled in the right direction, these sensitivities can make life [more rich] and meaningful, giving experiences more subtlety,” the researchers concluded.
What is Misophonia?
Misophonia is a kind of disorder wherein certain sounds trigger extreme emotional or physiological responses that others often perceive as unreasonable, under the circumstance. Their reaction might be regarded as ‘crazy’.