Science And Scary Sounds

Our research dollars at work.

Evolutionary psychologist (that’s a specialty?) John Neuhoff and his colleagues at The College of Wooster in Ohio are in the midst of a study on “looming” sounds.  The study consists of individuals in a test environment listening to a tone as it moves towards them.  They are instructed to push a button when they think the sound has moved to a point directly in front of them.

Turns out nearly all participants push the button too early.  Neuhoff and his team have interpreted this to mean that humans have adapted to anticipate danger and thus react to the location of the sound before it actually reaches them.

So, get the theory?

Test subject is sitting there.  Uh, oh.  There’s a scary tone moving towards him.  But he’s not supposed to push the button until the tone is right in front of him.  But it’s such a scary tone.  It’s moving closer.  It’s right there!  He pushes the button.

Turns out the sound was still some distance from the subject.

Hey, this is science!

Now, here’s the interesting part of the study.

Neuhoff and his team correlated button push response times with the fitness level of the subjects.  Turns out that physically fit men allow the sound to get closer before pushing the button, while fitness challenged men push the button much sooner while the sound is still some distance away.  This expands the previous body of work around “looming” sounds that found that women routinely respond to “looming” sounds sooner than their typically larger, stronger male counterparts.

So, the study’s conclusion is basically that wimps react to dangerous noises differently than jocks.  Presumably they react sooner due to their need for more time to get away, while the jocks just say “bring it on”.

Mark your calendars.  Neuhoff will be presenting these results in a talk titled “Strength and cardiovascular fitness predict time-to-arrival perception of looming sounds” to be presented at the 157th Acoustical Society of America Meeting to be held May 18-22 in Portland, Ore.

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