The Science Behind Annoyance

I am my own worst enemy. I decided to let the dog out without a leash and he ran away. I bent down to pick something up with a jar of bleu cheese dressing in my hand. It spilled all over the floor. I'm easily annoyed. Annoyed with relatives who go around and around a holiday menu as if it were a space mission. "Can I have a volunteer to pick up the moon rock?" "Only if you really want to pick up the moon rock." "Maybe the other astronaut would rather pick up the moon rock." "Email me back about that moon rock." Oh for goodness sake! The boys burp. And sing (constantly). And they need to show me every confounded Pokemon card and high jump off of the couch. They think I need to watch them feed the fish, hit play on the video game and make a sandwich out of crackers and cheese. It's annoying. I thought this was a matter of my patience running thin or perhaps a heightened stress level. We are entering the holiday season, after all. Then I stumbled upon an amusing article about the science of annoyance. It turns out that "Americans are annoying to the world because we are individualists who think we can and should control our world." Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/annoying-the-science-of-what-bugs-us-2011-5?op=1#ixzz2CmdX1J5c There's a (small) country where annoyance is categorized and ultimately, frowned upon... In that distant culture, people use nuanced vocabulary to describe away the annoyance we let rip in words and action For the Ifaluks "One person's anger (song) entails another's fear (metagu); someone's experiencing grief and frustration creates compassion/love/sadness (fago) in others." Their words express their feelings and have a rich vocabulary to express a variety of states of annoyance. tipmochmoch - annoyance that comes with feeling ill lingeringer - annoyance that builds from a series of minor but unwanted events nguch - annoyance with relatives who do the Ifaluk equivalent of failing to show up for a holiday dinner tang - the frustration that occurs "in the face of personal misfortunes and slights which one is helpless to redress" (Lutz) song - justifiable anger (the authors translate this as "You've done something that pisses me off. I know it, and you know it. But because expressing that annoyance would be inappropriate, I'll let it go, and so will you." In the end, there is a societal mandate to not get pissy with others. To do so is to risk ostracization. God Bless the USA.