The situational perspective in annoyance assessment explained
When we seek to assess the quality of life, in general way or in the workplace for example, it seems immediately necessary to take environmental stressors and discomfort factors into account. However, it’s not as simple as it looks. It is complicated to evaluate nuisances for a given situation because there is no one environmental situation that is annoying for everyone. Indeed, a large body of research agrees on the same point, specifically individuals in this situation strongly disagree about the annoyance experienced. According to a study conducted by Lévy-Leboyer and Moser (1976, cited by Lévy-Leboyer, 1982) on discomfort at homes caused by outdoor and indoor noise, it can be seen that among inhabitants of neighbouring dwellings with almost similar acoustic conditions, there are individuals who aren’t disturbed at all by the noise, while other individuals are very disturbed by the noise. And these contradictions can even be found within the same flat. There is, once again, no situation that causes dissatisfaction for everyone. Moreover, Moch (1988) will demonstrate that, with regard to neighbourhood noise, individuals will tend to tolerate more easily the noise of people with whom they are on good terms and have a good affinity than those whom they don’t appreciate or appreciate less. In the context of work, this case can be illustrated by the example of an office worker who, when perceiving equal noise, will be annoyed by it when it’s caused by a colleague with whom he does not have a good relationship, whereas he will not appraise unfavourably the noise caused by a good colleague with whom he maintains a friendly relationship.
Specifically, when we try to understand the nuisance assessment process, it’s important to consider two dimensions : the constitutive aspect of the environment and the subjective aspect of the individual. In order to illustrate this notion, we will take the case of a noise nuisance. First, we note that there are never two individuals equally exposed to the nuisance in question. For example, if we consider the case of noise produced by road traffic, various sounds that reach the ears of each inhabitant of the same building will be perceived in a totally different way, depending on the storey on which they live, phenomena such as resonance, absorption caused by the architecture, the location of the flat, etc. Furthermore, as mentioned above, this notion of noise also depends on a subjective assessment by the individual. Thus, the same music will be enjoyable for those who choose to listen to it but will be experienced as unbearable by those who are unintentionally exposed to it.
In sum, it’s pretty easy to understand that it isn’t so much a simple problem of differential psychology that causes this divergence in the evaluation of annoyance. There is a need to consider the human-environment relationship, in which the individual evolves within a specific situational context in which his actions, beliefs and motivations must be taken into account.
Bibliography
Lévy‐Leboyer, C. (1982). L’évaluation subjective des nuisances : Quelles mesures pour quels objectifs? Applied Psychology, 31(2), 253‑268. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1464-0597.1982.tb00095.x
Moch, A. (1989). Les stress de l’environnement : De la perception au stress. Presses universitaires de Vincennes.