Emotions evoked by exposure to footstep noise in residential buildings

• Published in: PloS one Vol. 13; no. 8; p. e0202058
• Main Authors: Park, Sang Hee, Lee, Pyoung Jik, Jeong, Jeong Ho
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Public Library of Science 13.08.2018; Public Library of Science (PLoS)
• Subjects: Acoustics; Adult; Aged; Analysis of Variance; Biology and Life Sciences; Clusters; Correlation; Emotions; Empathy; Engineering and Technology; Environmental Exposure; Female; Housing; Humans; Laboratories; Male; Mediation; Medicine and Health Sciences; Middle Aged; Moderators; Neurosciences; Noise; Noise levels; Noise sensitivity; Pain; Personality; Physiology; Republic of Korea; Research and Analysis Methods; Residence Characteristics; Residential areas; Residential buildings; Roads & highways; Social networks; Social psychology; Social Sciences; Sound; Surveys and Questionnaires; Traffic; Young Adult; Republic of Korea; United Kingdom > UK
• ISSN: 1932-6203; 1932-6203
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0202058

In the present study, the effect of footstep noise on emotions was investigated. This study used noise stimulus of human footsteps throughout the study. First, Korean emotion lexicons were collected from narratives of residents living in multi-family housing buildings. The lexicons were then classified into four emotion clusters, with three expressing negative emotions (anger, dislike, and pain) and the fourth depicting empathy. Since self-reported annoyance has long been investigated as one of the major non-auditory responses to noise, annoyance was measured along with affective responses in a laboratory experiment with varying noise levels. The findings revealed that the emotion and noise annoyance experienced by the participants were significantly affected by noise levels. All clusters expressing negative emotions showed strong correlations with noise annoyance, whereas that representing empathy showed the weakest correlation. Noise sensitivity and attitudes to the noise source were observed as possible moderators in emotional responses and annoyance ratings.