Why is it irritating to hear one half of a mobile conversation?

// June 2nd, 2010 // Uncategorized

Some research just published in Psychological Science suggests we find it harder to screen out someone’s conversation when we can only hear one side. The team at Cornell University got teams to do a number of conversation tasks while listening to both two-sided and one-sided conversations. They made more errors when listening to one-sided conversations. So, if you’ve ever felt irritated by the conversation on the tube home about someone’s plans to have Marks and Spencer lasagne and a bottle of wine in front of a DVD when they get home, it’s because your brain is trying to fill in the missing part of the conversation. Even if it’s as mundane as whether the DVD should be Mama Mia or Sex in the City…

What the research does not offer any explanation for is this natural curiosity that the brain has for “information” just beyond its reach. My feeling is that it’s the same impulse that makes us want to check each email as it comes in. It’s “gossip” which in our ancestral environment might have been a crucial nugget of information about something fundamental to our survival. Our brain has not yet caught up with the idea that it might just be about someone else’s frozen lasagne.

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2 Responses to “Why is it irritating to hear one half of a mobile conversation?”

  1. Doug Shaw says:
    2 June 2010 at 2:43 pm

    I’m not a fan of frozen lasagne myself but I do like this post. Personally I try to dial out some of the frustration by playing the part of the other person (in my mind I hasten to add). Beats getting riled about it, and of course I get to choose the DVD too!

  2. Lesa Becker, PhD says:
    3 June 2010 at 5:20 am

    I’d be interested to hear if the Cornell team studied the volume of people’s voices. When people are having a private two-way in-person conversation they usually speak in hushed tones. It seems when people talk on cell phones they SPEAK LOUDLY.

    I’ve made the mistake of responding to someone when they are talking on the phone using an earbud because I thought they were talking to me, rather than their invisible cell phone. Sometimes they look directly at you when they are talking and you get mixed verbal and non-verbal cues.

    I guess the next time someone uses their “CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW” cell phone voice, I’ll just have to respond with “YOU TALKIN’ TO ME?”