What Sound Can Wake You Up?
Women always wonder, why do men never wake up when their child suddenly begins crying at night? Do men just pretend to be asleep, or they seriously do not care? It is a known fact that a sound of baby crying in the middle of the night can wake up any woman, no matter if she has children or does not. But what about men? Why do they go on sleeping? Finally, psychologists got interested in this dilemma as well, and recently, a group of British specialists leaded by Dr. David Lewis carried out a series of interesting experiments, directed on finding out what sounds can wake up men, and what sounds can wake up women.
The experiments involving male and female volunteers took place at the MindLab institution. The specialists studied sleep environment of men and women and used various sounds to check out which of them can disturb the sleep. The results were overwhelming: it turned out that men can be waken up by absolutely different sounds than women, and there are very few similarities in the top 10 list of the most disturbing sounds which can interrupt sleep of both men and women.
Thus, three most disturbing sounds which can wake up men are a sound of car alarm, a sound of strong howling wind and a sound of buzzing fly. Also, men’s sleep can get disturbed to a great extent by a sound of snoring, clock ticking or chirruping of crickets. At the same time, the most disturbing sounds which can wake up women are child’s cry and the sound of a dipping tap. Such sounds as a sound of drilling, outside noises or a sound of snoring also have significant negative effects on women’s sleep. At that, howling wind and car alarm are somewhere in the bottom of the women’s list.
Therefore, this research shed the light on one more interesting difference between the genders. “These differing sensitivities may represent evolutionary differences that make women sensitive to sounds associated with a potential threat to their children while men are more finely tuned to disturbances posing a possible threat to the whole family,” the scientists comment. The results of the study were recently reported by Daily Mail newspaper.
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