This article examines the psychological effects of interruptive messages, such as spam emails, robocalls, and pop-ups, and why they are so annoying. A study of the 50 most annoying things in the life of 2,000 Brits found that deleting spam emails came in at number 4, while robocalls came in at number 10. The author argues that any demand on our attention that we don’t ask for will annoy us, as there is a direct link between the parts of our brain that governs the focusing of attention and the parts that regulate our emotions. He also mentions that a study by Rejer and Jankowski found that online ads can cause a decrease in focus and a downward slide in emotions, as well as reactance theory, which states that when something interrupts us, we perceive a loss of freedom to act as we wish. The article concludes by noting that robocalls are particularly irritating, due to their highly interruptive nature, and that politicians should reconsider using robocalls as an ad-delivery mechanism.
Excerpt from the main article:
by Gord Hotchkiss , Spamming and phishing and robocalls at midnightPop ups and autoplays and LinkedIn requests from salespeopleThese are a few of my least favorite thingsWe all feel the excruciating pain of unsolicited demands on our attention. In a study of the 50 most annoying things in life of 2,000 Brits by online security firm Kapersky, deleting spam email came in at number 4, behind scrubbing the bath, being trapped in voicemail hell and cleaning the oven. Based on this study, cleanliness is actually next to spamminess. Granted, Kapersky is a tech security firm, so the results …
The Eternal Hatred Of Interruptive Messages was originally published on MediaPost.com: email
