We’ve all been in situations where we can overhear someone else’s mobile phone conversation, perhaps whilst enjoying a coffee in the café, a drink in the bar, or when trying to read the newspaper on the train, or even while waiting to be served in a retail store, and yes it can be annoying.
Well now researchers from Cornell University in the US think they may have found out why overhearing a mobile phone conversation gets our backs up.
Apparently we can’t handle hearing a one way conversation because we can’t predict the flow of speech and that makes it more distracting and difficult to ignore.
“We have less control to move away our attention from half a conversation (or halfalogue) than when listening to a dialogue,” said Lauren Emberson, a co-author of the study
“People are often more irritated by nearby cell phone conversations rather than conversations between two people who are physically present. Since halfalogues really are more distracting and you can’t tune them out, this could explain why people are irritated” she told Reuters.
So basically when we’re listening so someone talking on their mobile, whether we want to or not, we’re trying to predict what the person is going to say next.
“When you hear half of a conversation, you get less information and you can’t predict as well,” said Emberson. “It requires more attention.”
The study carried out by Emberson along with co-author Michael Goldstein, involved 41 college students carrying out tasks that required them to concentrate whilst at the same time being distracted by hearing one half of a mobile phone conversation or hearing both parties talking.
When the participants were hearing only one half of the conversation, in other words the person talking was on their mobile and the students couldn’t hear what the other party was saying, they made more mistakes on their concentration tasks than when they could hear the whole conversation.
According to the researchers, these results show that hearing a one sided conversation can distract us when doing other tasks that require us to concentrate such as driving for example, and recommend further studies using driving simulators.
The study, “Overheard Cell-Phone Conversations: When Speech is More Distracting” will be published in the journal Psychological Science.
You know what’s coming next don’t you; they’ll be banning car passengers from using mobiles.
