The effect of noise sensitivity labelling and emotional priming on response to environmental noise

Abstract

Residents living around environmental noise commonly report adverse health effects, lowered mood, and sleep disturbances as a result of the noise. However, research has shown that personal characteristics such as noise sensitivity and annoyance towards noise are greater determinants of reactions to noise, than the objective level of the noise. Noise sensitivity is a personality trait which makes individual’s more reactive to noise, feel less control over noise, and makes them more annoyed by the noise source. The present study investigated whether it is possible to manipulate individual’s perception of their noise sensitivity and whether this played a role in their reactions towards environmental noise exposure. A further aim of the study was to examine whether being primed to have an emotional reaction towards noise impacted responses to environmental noise exposure. Eighty Auckland university students participated in this research. Noise sensitivity was measured prior to the experimental session. Questionnaires regarding symptoms, mood, and negative affect were administered at baseline. Subsequently, all participants underwent two noise sensitivity tests and depending on their group allocation were provided feedback that they were either low or high noise sensitive. Depending on group allocation participants were then required to watch either a high emotion video or low emotion video, both incorporating definition of noise sensitivity and procedural information. The high emotion video consisted of negative personal accounts of living around environmental noise combined with clips of aircraft, wind farms and traffic. The low emotion video consisted of neutral and positive accounts of living around noise, with images of nature and forests. Participants were exposed to five different environmental noises (infrasound, airport, nature, traffic, and wind turbines) while reporting on their current symptoms, emotion, and whether they attributed these to the noise, noise annoyance, and intended avoidant behaviours. Results showed that perceived noise sensitivity was able to be successfully manipulated. Being labelled as sensitive to noise resulted in greater annoyance towards wind turbine sounds. Being primed with an emotional reaction towards noise resulted in higher negative mood during airport, traffic, and wind turbine sounds. Furthermore, being labelled as sensitive to noise resulted in more symptoms attributed to airport and traffic sounds than nature sound. Lastly, powerful sounds such as airport and traffic noise initiated more symptom reports, higher negative mood, more intended avoidant behaviours, and more symptoms attributed to the sound compared to nature, infrasound and wind turbines. This research demonstrates that it is possible to change an individual’s perception of their noise sensitivity and this altered perception has the ability to change the way in which environmental noises are appraised. It also indicates that priming someone to have an emotional response to noise exposure can increase negative mood when exposed to environmental noise. This study illustrates the importance of factors that do not relate to the objective noise itself, in subjective response to noise exposure.