Crying Baby Is Most Sensitive Sound for Women

What sound drives you the craziest depends on your gender. If you’re a guy, you are more likely to be woken up by a fly buzzing around the room than a baby crying. For a woman, however, no other noise will stop you from sleeping than that of a crying baby.

For men, the wail of a car alarm is the sound that is most likely to wake them, followed by the howling of the wind, a fly buzzing, snoring, and noise from drains. Crying babies? They don’t even make the top ten sounds that wake up guys.

The study was conducted at research organization MindLab as part of its studies into what makes up a good night’s sleep. The lab created a sleeping environment in which they measured the volunteer’s brain activity while playing a variety of sounds.

Other studies have found that nearly one out of three adults suffer a disturbed night’s sleep between five and seven nights a week.

Researchers speculate that the different noise sensitivities between the sexes is part of the evolutionary process where women became more sensitive to sounds that could threaten their baby while men are disturbed by sounds that could threaten the whole family.

photo credit: TheGiantVermin