why do we feel discomfort when hearing certain sounds like chalk on a black board…

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Or ice shaving, or silverware scretching a plate, or powders starch being compressed? Why do we cringe when hearing those sounds?

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4 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

I don’t know but I always wondered if there was some evolutionary thing carrying over to the present, like nails on a chalkboard or silverware on a plate triggering the same part of the brain that listened for predator claws on stone thousands of years ago or whatever.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Certain sounds trigger a subconscious responce in humans. In part for survival purposes. I think they determined that chalkboard scraping is akin to a baby crying. Make a baby crying your alarm in the morning and trust me, you’ll wake up really happy.

Anonymous 0 Comments

For the opposite reason as to why we like music. Sound travels through the air in waves like the ocean on a beach. When the waves arrive neatly and ordered, say for every 3 small waves you get a big wave that’s good and we can have fun by surfing on it because it’s nice and predictable. This is how musical notes work, our brains are surfing on the combination of waves in a way that is nice and enjoyable.

Now, if the water is incredibly choppy and unpredictable, lots of different sized waves arriving randomly well that’s bad, you can’t surf on it and if you try you might die. Nails on a chalk board, car horns, babies crying, tornado warning sirens, these are all very chaotic sounds with lots of randomly arriving waves so our brains don’t like it and think something bad is happening. Mainly babies crying, that’s the one we evolved to react to negatively and everything else is probably conveniently coincidental

Anonymous 0 Comments

ice shaving sounds make you uncomfortable??