We’ve all been there — sitting in a public place, and feeling like that person over there, talking on their cell phone, is so annoying. Why are they so annoying? What makes a cell phone conversation that you overhear so distracting?
Four researchers, led by Lauren Emberson (2010) from Cornell University, set to find out.
Previous research has shown that we don’t seem to be as distracted when listening to a full dialogue between two people as when we are listening to a “halfalogue” — that is, just one side of a two-sided conversation.
In two small studies conducted exclusively on 41 college undergraduates, the researchers devised tasks to measure how distracting mobile phone conversations are when we hear only one side of the conversation. Specifically, they were interested in measuring whether such conversations could affect our ability to concentrate on a task that demanded good attention in order to complete successfully.