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Why Mobile Phones Are Annoying
griffinn writes "Jakob Neilsen recently conducted a study comparing the perceived annoyance level of two commuters having a face-to-face conversation and one commuter talking on the mobile phone. Interestingly enough, subjects were also asked whether the ring tone is annoying, and people didn't find the ring to be particularly bad."
Switch to Verizon and you won't have to keep yelling can you hear me now. No seriously - CDMA which is used by Verizon and Sprint have positive feedback meaning that the phone continually transmits and receives; so what you say but what happens is you hear background noises and you perceive mentally that the person has your complete attention.
With other vendors that use TDMA such as ATT, Cingular, TMobile they have to electronic introduce background noise because this technology doesn't continually transmit. They introduce clicks and pops to simulate background noise. This gives you the perception that you have to yell to keep the other persons attention.
How are those damn ring tones NOT annoying? "Hey look how cool I am with my 50 cent ring tone!" What ever happened to a plain phone, that rings, vibrates and stores contact information. I find the whole ringtone /instant messaging and even the internet on my phone quite useless.
How about a study showing the time delay from when a cellphone rings in the theater to when people get mad, measured in milliseconds. In L.A. it must be higher than here,because we get people from there talkin on phones like it's their job, IN the theater, DURING the movie.
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I rather like their hypothesis that people pay more attention to half a conversation than a full one and it seems it may be dead on. While I don't particularly listen in on others' conversations, I know I definitely overhear a cell conversation, even at normal volume, because having only half the conversation seems to leave my brain wondering and pondering the other half more.
Although, I can't believe they don't think the rings are annoying. I just wish a phone could have at least one decent normal ringer now... I don't want a song, but there really aren't options other than those now. The most recent phone we bought was for my fiance and all the rings it came with were songs. We figured we'd download something normal and only found more songs. Ultimately, we just picked the song ringer that sounded the least annoying.
-N
I've nothing to say here...
is the loud speakers. I used to see the same thing with construction supervisor types in restaraunts with radiophones, back before the modern mobils became possible. Now they do it with mobile phones, along with lots of other people who never had access to a radiophone.
And of course, some people talk at the top of their voice even when they're sitting face-to-face with the people they're talking to. (And have a tendency to be complaining about their family problems or some other crap you particularly don't want to hear.)
The ringers are annoying during a movie, concert, lecture, exam, etc., but much more often it is the overly loud yakking that annoys. I hate sitting in a restaraunt and having to raise my voice to talk to someone at the table with me because someone four tables away is hollering into a cell.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I agree. What's even more annoying is those two way plans that work like walkie talkies. In such a situation, not only do you have to listen to the person talking but also their companion over the phone.
" when I want to listen in, I only hear half of the conversation "
Trust me, unless you are with a friend who's talking to another friend, you really don't.
It is that I cannot get a good cell phone anymore that doesn't come with a camera, so I have to decide to either leave my cell phone in the car while I am at work or get a dumbed down basic cell phone.
These manufactures really aren't thinking of the part of the market that buys the most cell phones, and that is the corporations, and most corporations have strict guidlines against cameras. So it really blows, and I hope they come to they senses and stop marketing to the teeny-boppers. At least they could put out comparable phone that doesn't have that camera.
In South-East Asia, where I am from, having a handphone is almost as important as being literate;you can't really live without it.You can but its hard to communicate long distance since public land-line phones are not well mantained and are in generally bad condition.Its no longer a matter of status/fashion statement.
This is why public cell-phone ethics is a serious issue here.In general, the older ones have a tendency to talk too loudly, however I do noticed that the younger generations have learnt to speak as unobtrusively as possible, maybe realising the phone-speaker can actually pickup their voice without having to shout across the room.
My 2 cents
Having lived for nearly a year in Shanghai, I'm all but immune to cellphones. As a matter of fact, I've been one of those people who not only leave their cellphone on in the theater, but actually take the time to answer if it rings. I kid you not, this is normal behavior here.
And why not? In China, as well as most parts of Asia, cellphones are not an annoyance in any way. They're just a part of life. I think in the West, cellphones were initially thought to be annoying because they were an obnoxious show of money, and this has carried on to this day. In China and South Korea, having a cellphone is part of life and is not considered as annoying.
Methink the people surveyed here thought a cellphone conversation was more annoying than a face-to-face conversation simply because it's, well, a cellphone conversation. We still tiptoe around cellphones in the West. For all I can see, this annoyance is purely cultural.
(Earlier today, I saw a perfect picture of modern-day Shanghai: in a sea of bicycles, a man riding, and a woman seated in the Chinese way in equilibrium on the back of the bike with both her legs on one side... And as the man pedals his old rusted bike, the girl behind her is merrily thumb-keying SMS messages to her friends.)
I always thought that there is some psychological thing involved, like your sub-consciousness knowing that the person you're talking to is physically far away from you, thus making you rise your voice. Same as screaming into the speaker for intercontinental calls etc. And you need to think about the multitasking too. Walking through a mall trying to avoid people while having a descent conversation can be distracting. Though I have to admit that there are still a few snobs trying to tell the world how cool they are here.
Is there any official name for this phenomenon? Same as screaming into the speaker for intercontinental calls etc.
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Someone walking down the street talking on a cell phone doesn't bother me, nor does someone sitting in a restaurant talking on a cell phone.
What REALLY bothers me is when I'm sitting in a presentation at a conference (or something like that) and they repeatedly ask that people turn off cell phones or set them to vibrate. Then, naturally, someone's phones has to ring half way through.
Now answer me this, what kind of fucked up individual sits there while someone clearly asks them to silence their phone and doesn't? What is the thought process? Is it "Well, everyone else is turning silencing their phones like they asked, but they couldn't have meant me" or is it more "I'm not going to silence my phone, I'll just assume that nobody will call me"? Or is it that these people somehow forgot that they HAVE a phone?
I've never understood this but it seems to happen every time. Almost as if making the announcement before a presentation to silence phones CAUSES one to ring eventually.
Oh, and the worst is when the phone is in some kind of bag or briefcase and the owner just ignores it like everyone around him doesn't know it is his and he doesn't want to give away that HE is the asshole. We all know it is your phone you goober, looking around like you are trying to figure out whos it is will not fool anyone so turn it off!
There, I feel better now.
Finkployd
Let me first start by saying that I agree mobile phone use does have its etiquette, and certain limits should be respected (i.e. volume of the ring tone in a quiet place, such as a library).
But I really think it's only a matter of habit. I believe if an American lived in Sweden for a while (a country with one of the highest mobile phone penetration rates), they would quickly get used to hearing phones ringing and people talking on them all the time, without feeling necessarily annoyed. It's the constant reinforcement by others in US society that mobile phones are in fact extremely annoying that maintains this perception.
It's almost as if people go out of their way to get annoyed at someone talking on the phone. Because logically speaking, and as the article states, if you only hear half the conversation, you should only be bothered half as much. And if listening to just one side of the conversation is bothering you, then why are you listening in the first place?
They're annoying because..they're annoying.
-The insipid ringtones (hi, Britney!)
-The shouting
-The uniformity of the conversation (I'M ON A TRAIN! WHERE ARE YOU?)
-The blandness of what's being said (YES WELL I WAS SAYING TO MARGE THAT I REALLY LIKE THE FLOWERS AND MARGE SAID...)
I've noticed that the people who speak more quietly on phones tend to make a more educated and lucid impression--they stick to a conversation, for them a phone chat isn't some HYPER-/<3WL 5H1T D00D, but a tool, and they understand that they don't have to yell to be heard.
Maybe talking face to face with someone makes it easier for them to smack you upside the head when you say something idiotic.
To be perfectly honest, when idiots converse loudly in person, it's equally irritating. But then, that's probably just me.
Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage
Last friday I read in other news that a cell phone possibly ignited a flash explosion of gas vapors. I think this incident will revive the discussion about banning cell phone use from gas stations. In almost every manual there's a warning not to use the cell phone when exposed to inflammable gasses. I haven't seen a warning signs at filling stations yet but I expect them to come soon.
I think the problem is that the phone covers your ear, so you can't hear so well and the normal feedback that controls your voice doesn't work so well.
Normal phones got round this by feeding back some of the signal from the microphone to the earpiece, so you could hear yourself speaking a little. Unfortunately, mobiles don't seem to do this.
Those kinds of things are already available. I have a small clip-thingie right here. It reacts to the same signal a phone reacts to when there's an incoming call. It vibrates (quite violently) and blinks a red LED. The only problem seems to be that is a bit too sensitive. Otherwise, it's a pretty neat little gadget.
Eat the rich.
...isn't the ring tones, or people using it in theatres (never had that problem), or even people talking louder. I'm sure they are annoying ring tones and people who can't comprehend "Please turn of your phones now" or people who go "HELLO?!?" and whatnot - it's just that they don't bug me (as much).
Two things really bug me:
1) You only know half of the conversation. So, naturally, the person that you can't hear is apparently the funniest person alive, and the person on the phone can't stop laughing, or then he'll act like he can insult you, and so he does, as if he forgets you can hear him, etc.
2) You have the person over and you're hanging out with your friends and you're all having a good time, and then someone's phone rings, and they go and leave the room, or they just stay there (even worse) but they just kinda drop out of the party and all. It's like being socially antisocial or something.
Just bugs me.
It's not that somebody is an asshole, it's that they have made a mistake. And with many people, it's likely that one of them will have made a mistake.
Let's say that in 1 out of 100 meetings, you fail to turn off your phone (either you hit the wrong button, you thought it was already off and didn't check, etc). Now imagine there are 200 people in the audience, each with a 50% chance of receiving a call during the meeting. The chance of a single person's phone being correct is 0.99. But of the 100 people who will receive a call (.5 * 200), the probability that they are all correct is 0.99^100, or ~0.36. That means there's a 74% chance that somebody's phone will ring, just as an accident!
Obviously the numbers are made-up, but you can see how many unlikely independent probabilities combine to create an unintuitive result.
I was at a business lunch, we where four people in all (all old friends) and the mattes had gone from business to just talk. We where having fun..
One of the guys mobils rings. He looks at it and says "Sorry, I have to take this...".
He answers the phone and the conversations goes like this:
X:"Hi, this is X".
[The other part identifies it self, and obviously askes if it's interrupting anything important]
X: "No, no problem - I was bored anyway".
Cracked me up!
But there's a good bit of truths in it. When you answer your mobile phone while in company with other people, that's basicly what you are saying.
"I'm answering this call, because I care more about having a conversation with a random stanger, than this conversation I'm having with you. For not other reason that the fact that it's convinient for the stranger to talk to me now. The fact that you are wasting your time while I'm having the conversation will not mean anything to me, and I'll keep on talking as long as it take and beyond..."
TC - My Photos..
As the speech is much less clear (due to high compression*) than when the person is right in front of you, you feel you need to speak more loudly to make them understand (in normal conversations, if you speak more loudly and annunciate better, people can generally understand more easily). This is exacerbated when they "Pardon?" because it cut out in the middle of a word or something and then you assume they didn't hear you because it wasn't loud enough.
The problem is made even worse by the puny speakers on mobile phones which aren't powerful enough to make the other person heard in an environment with lots of background noise. If you can't hear them, you assume you need to shout to make them hear you. (Just think about this next time you have a normal conversation somewhere with lots of noise).
Another issue for mobile to mobile calls is the microphone picking up background noise and/or not being in the correct position to pick up the other persons voice. Again, this makes the voice too quiet, muffled, etc.
It would be interesting to conduct an experiment to measure the volume at which a person speaks on a phone as the voice signal is made progressively more distorted and/or quieter. I bet there is a strong correlation.
* Mobile phone speech is compressed to just 13kb/s for GSM (using a linear predictive coding) which compares to the, admittedly uncompressed, 64kb/s of normal phone signals
Shout them down. It's seems to be standard practice in Denmark. If some idiot is rude enough to let their phone go off in a restaurant and then have the gall to answer it, the noise level goes way up for the duration of the conversation. Those nearest the idiot, talk to each other or themselves and make every excuse to clank silverware or dishes until the conversation is over.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Here in CH you also have a 100 CHF fine for using your phone without a handsfree set in the car. And here in CH you also have people (like me) who spend quite a bit of time on the phone with other people at the same time as working on a laptop in a train or at a desk away from a fixed line where I could plug in a bulky headset. Not to mention those of us who don't like untangling cables all the time.
:)
So I appreciate the fact that you said "most of the people" instead of "all the people".
What's really funny is that a lot of people using cheap wired mikes end up holding the damn mouthpiece up to their face anyway while talking
Regardless, I haven't seen a single bluetooth headset where the battery doesn't go to shit after a few months of use--my Sony Ericcson, while it was useful during its (short) life, is now basically a fairly expensive bit of drawer-filling junk.
Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage
Why is it that when you go see a person and the phone starts ringing, they have to interrupt an important conversation to take of someone out of the blue?
When doing service calls a few years back, I remember going to this customer and the receptionist was too busy answering the phone. After 20 minutes of "one moment, I'll be right with you" I decided to use the guest phone and call her up asking for the person I wanted to see. Manners are just out the window where phones are concerned.
^D
Even more fun.
Carry a notepad around. When someone starts talking on their mobile, very obviously take notes. Move closer to them, and even ask them to repeat stuff.
If they don't like it, tell 'em to take their private conversation out of the public. If they get really pushy, close up the notepad, tell them you'll add to your notes later, and keep listening.
This issue came to the forefront with Stanley Milgram's "shocking" experiment on authority, where he was trying to find out why people followed unethical orders, vis-a-viz WWII and the Holocaust. You may recall from Psych 101 that Milgram set up an experiment in which an unsuspecting victim thought he or she was shocking someone for incorrectly answering questions. I know a bit about this because I worked on Milgram's archived papers. (Some people forget that in the actual experiment, the shocks were a hoax).
Anyway, what occured to me is that reality/prank shows like Scare Tactics etc. go way beyond Milgram's experiment. I assume the only way these episodes get broadcast is that the victim, after the prank is revealed, ends up signing releases, probably in exchange for payment. But the initial trauma/annoyances the victim experiences are not consented to until afterwards. It seems like the media doesn't operate under the same ethical assumptions that science is burdened by. Offtopic, but something that occured to me reading this.
This is probably what's going to have to happen. Let me make a smimlar analogy with the highways & automobiles.
When cars first came out, it created a lot of similar problems as we are now seeing with cell phones. The people that had these new-fangles automobiles loved em. Why, because it allowed them to get from A to B a heck of a lot faster than they could on a horse, and they weren't tied to train schedules. But the people that didn't ahve automobiles hated them. Why, because they ran otehr traditional forms of transportation off the road. A peron on a horse & buggy stood no chance against someone in an automobile. Hence, there was a lot of resentment between the 'haves' and the 'have-nots'.
So what did we do, we created laws to govern the 'haves' We told them where they could drive their cars, and how fast they can go. We also gave them restrictions, such as stoplights & such. As the technology matured, more and more people adopted it. And as more and more people adopted it, there became fewer 'have-nots' to complaint about the have's.
Right now, cell phone adoption is in a similar stage as the early automobile. There are the cell phone 'have's and the 'have-nots.' As more and more people become 'haves' we are going to have to create rules & laws to govern the use, just like we did with the automobile. We've created pedestrain only streets, primarily in shopping districts. Why can't we create cell-phone free areas on trains, theaters, and other places.
Now, I'm never to be one in favor of big government, but just as they did in the early years of the Auto, they're going to have to step in and make some regulations to control the use of Cell Phones.
No man is an island, But if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie them together, they make a pretty good raft.
If you'll notice, your regular landline phone supplies feedback of your voice through the earpiece. In the telephone industry this is called sidetone. I've never figured out why cell phones don't do that as well. Without the expected sidetone feedback, people tend to talk louder since they are not getting the feedback that they are accustomed to. "Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
The bad part is the loud speakers that really dont need a phone in the first place.
I disagree -- I think I buy into the article pretty strongly, which says that volume is a minimal issue. I've tried paying attention to what irritates me about cell phones when someone is conversing on one, and my feelings click with what the study says.
The problem is that normally, we respond when someone says something to us. Our brain is cued by it.
The request-for-attention pattern this follows is someone saying something near us, followed by a period of silence as they wait for our response. As the period of silence increases, the likelihood that the message was directed at us (and we should respond and haven't) increases (hence the common pattern of someone saying something, stopping, and two seconds later someone looking up and saying "uh, did you say something to me" -- the "request for attention" sequence was sent).
We are pretty good about ignoring conversation -- sitting in a crowded lunchroom, it's easy to let background noise fade into the background.
The problem is that cell phone speakers follow our brain's "I am requesting your attention" almost exactly. So we're sitting here uncomfortably having someone grab our attention every two seconds or so. It's extremely disruptive when you're trying to think about something else. The only real fix is to start ignoring people that *are* trying to get our attention, which isn't great either.
I would say that the primary issue is that we need a sensory input that would allow us to determine when someone is talking on the phone. Then our brain can learn to distinguish between "cell phone speaker -- ignorable" and "someone trying to get your attention".
I think that a good solution would be to provide (surprise, more noise) a buzz, a sort of masked noise from the phone. When the person on the other end of the phone is talking, we get an unintelligable but audible buzz. It would be crucial that (a) the buzz not be an annoying annoying, (b) the buzz not be easily picked up by microphones (especially cell phones, so that feedback doesn't occur -- a filter is necessary), (c) that cell phone manufacturers standardize on such a buzz sound, so that people talking near each other on different cell phones don't interfere -- this would also allow people to more quickly learn to identify cell phones. I think that cell phone disruptiveness is largely a technical problem, not a social problem (though people talking in movie theaters still require a swift kick to the nuts).
May we never see th
Close. The problem is that your system requires the users to actively make an effort to do things properly. I don't see that ever working, simply because people are lazy, and social pressure should only be used as a last ditch problem.
The issue is that of the protocol.
When a cell phone is called, it should enter the ringing state. At that point, one of two buttons can be hit -- "accept -- pending talking" and "reject". Currently, I believe that people usually just turn off their phone to do a "reject", so that much functionality is in place. The protocol should allow a "accepted, but cannot talk yet state". At that point, the person with the cell can extricate themselves from whatever situation they're in, and can find a quiet place to handle the call. They'd then hit the "ready to talk" button.
This could interoperate with older, non-compliant phones by sending a text message (or brief audio clip saying "hold on") and then either terminating the call and calling back when "ready to talk" is hit, or simply opening the connection and leaving the phone speakers muted after the initial clip) until "ready to talk" is hit.
May we never see th
The funny thing is that they have done a controlled study, and you haven't. No matter what you believe until you actually do a controlled study you're opinion would seem to be wrong.
Your faith is touching - that the methodology was sound, that it wasn't constructed to produce a given result, that it was conducted as stated ...
In any case, the Slashdot audience is probably more likely to work in an office environment than the general population. Where annoying ringtones are heard:
No doubt these episodes don't bother a kid at the mall much, or somebody who stays at home answering survey calls. They bug the crap out of me ...
I have a different theory as to why people talk more loudly on cell phones.
On a regular telephone you can hear yourself coming out of the speaker end just a little bit. I don't know if this is because your voice is travelling through the hollow plastic, or if the telephone system is actually designed to do that. Either way, how loud you are hearing yourself compared to the other person helps to give you some feedback into how loudly you actually need to be talking.
On a cellphone, your voice just kind of travels off into nowhere. You don't hear yourself at all coming from the phone. Hence, you feel the need to talk louder, and louder, until you realize that , yes, you are talking loud enough.
This is what happens to me all the time. I always feel that little "urge" that I'm not talking loud enough, and so I sometimes try to actively talk below my comfort level of loudness.
I *am* a doctor, and I'll tell you, we *don't* use cell phones for anything "life-or-death". In fact, we're supposed to turn *OFF* our cell phones in the critical/intensive care units (where things are the MOST life-or-death), since they theoretically can interfere with the telemetry.
Furthermore, if I am currently responsible for patients that may need my care at a moment's notice, for life-threatening situations, I can tell you I would *NOT* be taking in a movie, or out at a restaurant. I only go out when I'm off-service, or my pager's signed out to someone else in/by the hospital.