IS PERCEIVED ANNOYANCE MORE SUBJECT-DEPENDENT THAN PERCEIVED LOUDNESS

The common view that perceived annoyance is more subject-dependent tha n perceived loudness was put to an empirical test. in two experiments, independent judgements of loudness and annoyance of the same communit y sounds were collected from two groups of subjects. If the common vie w is valid then: (a) the inter-individual variation, that is the distr ibution among subjects' responses, should be larger for annoyance than for loudness, and (b) the differences between the inter-individual co efficient of variation and the intra-individual coefficient of variati on should be larger for annoyance than for loudness. The results do no t support such a view with regard to loudness and annoyance. Rather pe rceived annoyance was shown to be less subject-dependent than perceive d loudness, especially for loud community noises.