Life is full of problems, both big and small. Leaky faucets, dirty surfaces, loud neighbors or government inefficiency. Some problems we can easily fix ourselves, some are harder to address. In a recently published study, the Society for the Theoretical Research of Environmental Stimuli and Sensitivities (STRESS) discovered that all problems, both the big ones and the small ones, have one thing in common.

“People who complain about problems, but do nothing to fix them, are always more annoying than the problem itself,” says Dr. Roland Vexley, who headed the study. “Whenever there is a problem, it is likely to become even more bothersome because of some cognitively impaired person who feels the need to air out his grievances, as if he were the only one who was affected by the problem.”

As part of the study, participants were asked to wait in a waiting room with a leaky faucet that produced a noticeable and annoying dripping sound every 30 seconds or so. In the test group, the participants had to share the waiting room with another person who, unbeknownst to them, was actually a researcher, and who occasionally made comments about the leaky faucet along the lines of, “Man, that leaky faucet sure is annoying,” or, “They should really get this thing fixed sometime; it totally disturbs my peace of mind.”

In a follow-up survey, participants who had to share the room with the chronic complainer reported significantly higher annoyance. One participant compared the experience to “having sandpaper scraped over my brain”.

The authors of the study hope that the results of their study will help many people to self-reflect and become less annoying. Dr. Vexley suggests that everyone should follow a simple maxim: “Before talking about something that annoys me, I should first ask myself: Is my venting about this problem really going to change anything? If it isn’t, then I should probably shut up about it, because chances are everyone else has already noticed it as well.”

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