It’s so universal that it’s become a cliché: nails on a chalkboard. When it comes to noises that bother everyone’s ears, it’s seemingly a given that scraping fingernails across a slate board is the one that everyone hates most.
But when a group of neuroscientists decided to test which sounds most upset the human brain, they discovered that fingernails on a chalkboard isn’t number one. It’s not even number two.
via Smithsonian
Car alarms. Hands down.
Seriously, if your car alarm went off right now, would you:
(a) hear it,
(b) recognize it as yours, and
(c) do anything about it?
No? Too bad, because everyone else had to listen to it!