Abstract
The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between personality traits (extraversion and neuroticism) and noise-induced annoyance. The effect of exposure to the single-frequency noise stimuli with low (65 dB) and high (85 dB) intensity on noise-induced annoyance levels of 169 students was studied. A tone generator software was used to generate noise stimuli with different frequencies. The noise induced annoyance levels were measured by the numerical rating scale recommended by ISO/TS 15666:2003. The Eysenck Personality Questionnaire-Revised Short Scale (EPQ-RS) which included a lie scale was employed to assess the dimensions such as personality, neuroticism, extraversion and psychoticism. Results revealed that for the low-intensity noise stimuli, at frequencies below 1000 Hz, the noise induced annoyance levels were equal for extroverts and introverts. But at frequencies above 1000 Hz, the levels for introverts were higher than extroverts. For the subjects exposed to the low-intensity noise stimuli, those with neurotic personality trait felt more noise induced annoyance than non-neurotic subjects at all frequencies. Exposure to high-intensity noise stimuli contributed to more noise induced annoyance among non-neurotic subjects within the whole frequency range. Also, exposure to low-intensity noise stimuli, resulted in higher levels of noise induced annoyance among female subjects for the whole frequency range.Noise annoyance may occur at any noise level, mainly due to different characteristics and personality traits of the individuals. Therefore, since the engineering control solutions often cannot mitigate the levels of annoyance caused by noise to the optimal level for many individuals, other influential factors such as individuals' personality traits should be taken into account.
Published Version
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