Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-6bf8c574d5-mcfzb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-03-09T22:37:52.987Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Noise: effects on health

from Psychology, health and illness

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2014

By
Staffan Hygge
Edited by
Susan Ayers ,
Andrew Baum ,
Chris McManus ,
Stanton Newman ,
Kenneth Wallston ,
John Weinman  and
Robert West
Staffan Hygge
Affiliation:
University of Gävle
Susan Ayers
Affiliation:
University of Sussex
Andrew Baum
Affiliation:
University of Pittsburgh
Chris McManus
Affiliation:
St Mary's Hospital Medical School
Stanton Newman
Affiliation:
University College and Middlesex School of Medicine
Kenneth Wallston
Affiliation:
Vanderbilt University School of Nursing
John Weinman
Affiliation:
United Medical and Dental Schools of Guy's and St Thomas's
Robert West
Affiliation:
St George's Hospital Medical School, University of London
Get access

Summary

Noise: nature and measurement

Noise is often defined as unwanted sound or sounds that have an adverse effect on humans. What is sweet music for one person may be noise to someone else. Thus, noise is a psychological construct influenced both by physical and psychosocial properties.

Sound is created by the rapidly changing pressure of air molecules at the eardrum. A single tone, such as that from a tuning fork, can be depicted as a fixed wavelength sinusoidal pressure distribution across time. The number of pressure cycles per second, measured in hertz (Hz), is the basis for the sensation of pitch. A healthy young ear is sensitive to sounds between approximately 20 Hz and up to 20 kHz. The amplitude of the sine wave is perceived as loudness. To accommodate the wide dynamic power range of the human ear a logarithmic magnitude scale for sounds has been introduced. Its unit is the decibel (dB). Adding two independent sound sources of the same dB-level will yield a sum that is ≈3 dB higher than one of them alone. The subjective effect of a change in 3 dB amounts to a just perceptible change. A change of around 10 dB is needed to experience the sound as twice as loud.

The hearing threshold for pure tones is lowest in the frequency range 500–4000 Hz, which also is the range where human speech has its maximum energy content.

Type
Chapter
Information
Cambridge Handbook of Psychology, Health and Medicine , pp. 137 - 141
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2007

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Berglund, B. & Lindvall, T. (Eds.). (1995). Community noise. Archives of the Center for Sensory Research, 2, 1–195. (Document prepared for the World Health Organization, WHO, URL: http://www.nonoise.org/library/whonoise/whonoise.htm).
Boman, E., Enmarker, I. & Hygge, S. (2005). Strength of noise effects on memory as a function of noise source and age. Noise & Health, 7, 11–26.
Broadbent, D. E. (1983). Recent advances in understanding performance in noise. In Rossi, G. (Ed.). Proceedings of the 4th international congress on noise as a public health problem, Vol. 2 (pp. 719–38). Milan: Centro Ricerche e Studi Amplifon.
Cohen, S. (1980). Aftereffects of stress on human performance and social behavior: a review of research and theory. Psychological Bulletin, 88, 82–108.Google Scholar
Cohen, S., Evans, G. W., Stokols, D. & Krantz, D. S. (1986). Behavior, health, and environmental stress. New York: Plenum Press.
Cohen, S. & Spacapan, S. (1984). The social psychology of noise. In Jones, D. M. & Chapman, A. J. (Eds.). Noise and society. London: Wiley.
Enmarker, I., Boman, E. & Hygge, S. (2006). Structural equation models of memory performance across noise conditions and age groups. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 47, 449–60.
Evans, G. E. & Cohen, S. (1987). Environmental stress. In Stokols, D. & Altman, I. (Eds.). Handbook of environmental psychology (pp. 571–610). New York: Wiley.
Evans, G. W.Lepore, S. J. (1993). Nonauditory effects of noise on children: a critical review. Children's Environments, 10, 31–51.Google Scholar
Glass, D. C. & Singer, J. E. (1972). Urban stress: experiments on noise and social stressors. New York: Academic Press.
Griefahn, B. & Schuette, M. (2003). Noise and sleep: present state (2003), and further needs. In Jong, R. G., Houtgast, T., Franssen, E.A.M. & Hofman, W. F. (Eds.). Proceedings of the 8th international congress of international congress on noise as a public health problem (pp. 183–184). Delft: Foundation ICBEN 2003.
Hockey, R. & Hamilton, P. (1983). The cognitive patterning of stress states. In Hockey, R. (Ed.). Stress and fatigue in human performance (pp. 331–62). New York: Wiley.
Hughes, R. W. & Jones, D. M. (2003). Indispensable benefits and unavoidable costs of unattended sounds for cognitive functioning. Noise and Health, 6, 63–76.Google Scholar
Hygge, S. (2003). Classroom experiments on the effects of different noise sources and sound levels on long-term recall and recognition in children. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 17, 895–914.Google Scholar
Hygge, S., Evans, G. W. & Bullinger, M. (2002). A prospective study of some effects of aircraft noise on cognitive performance in school children. Psychological Science, 13, 469–74.Google Scholar
Hygge, S., Jones, D. M. & Smith, A. P. (1998). Recent developments in noise and performance. In Carter, N. & Job, R.F.S. (Eds.). Noise Effects ‘98 – proceedings of the 7th international congress on noise as a public health problem, Vol. 1 (pp. 321–8). Sydney, Australia: National Capital Printing ACT.
Jones, D. M. (1990). Progress and prospects in the study of performance in noise. In Berglund, B. & Lindvall, T. (Eds.). Noise as a public health problem, Vol. 4: new advances in noise research. Part 1 (pp. 383–400). Stockholm: Swedish Council for Building Research.
Jones, D. M. & Chapman, A. J. (Eds.). (1984). Noise and society. London: Wiley.
Jones, D. M. & Macken, W. J. (1993). Irrelevant tones produce an irrelevant speech effect: implications for coding in phonological memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 19, 369–81.Google Scholar
Jones, D. M. & Morris, N. (1992). Irrelevant speech and cognition. In Jones, D. M. & Smith, A. P. (Eds.). Factors affecting human performance: Vol. 1. The physical environment (pp. 29–54). London: Academic Press.
Kahneman, D. (1973). Attention and effort. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Kryter, K. (1985). The Effects of Noise on Man (2nd edn.). New York: Academic Press.
Lazarus, R. S. (1966). Psychological stress and coping processes. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Öhrström, E. (1993). Research on noise and sleep since 1988: Present state. In Vallet, M. (Ed.). Noise as a public health problem. Proceedings of the 6th international congress, Vol. 3 (pp. 331–8). Arcueil, France: Inrets.
Peterson, E. A., Augenstein, J. S., Tanis, D. C. & Augenstein, D. G. (1981). Noise raises blood pressure without impairing auditory sensitivity. Science, 211, 1450–52.Google Scholar
Stansfeld, S. A., Berglund, B., Clark, C. et al. (2005). Aircraft and road traffic noise and children's cognition and health: a cross-sectional study. Lancet, 365, 1942–49.
Stansfeld, S. & Lercher, P. (2003). Non-auditory physiological effects of noise: five year review and future directions. In Jong, R. G., Houtgast, T., Franssen, E.A.M. & Hofman, W. F. (Eds.). Proceedings of the 8th international congress of international congress on noise as a public health problem (pp. 84–90). Delft: Foundation ICBEN 2003.
Smith, A. (1989). A review of the effects of noise on human performance. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 30, 185–206.Google Scholar
Smith, A. P. (1993). Recent advances in the study of noise and human performance. In Vallet, M. (Ed.). Noise as a public health problem. Proceedings of the 6th international congress, Vol. 3 (pp. 293–300). Arcueil, France: Inrets.
Smith, A. P. & Jones, D. M. (1992). Noise and performance. In Jones, D. M. & Smith, A. P. (Eds.). Factors affecting human performance: Vol. 1. The physical environment (pp. 1–28). London: Academic Press.
Tempest, W. (Ed.). (1985). The noise handbook. London: Academic Press.

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×