8 Biggest Irritations In Life Explained By Science
4. Other Peoples Kids
Sorry parents, but hell is other people's kids.
It might not be much comfort to you, but there is a very good reason why you just can't tune out when a toddler is having a meltdown in the supermarket, but its parent(s) seem to be blissfully unaware of just how much you would like to dropkick it.
For a start, even if you don't have children of your own, evolution has primed you to respond to their cries of distress at superspeed. Brain scans have shown that the brain produces a strong involuntary response to the sound of a baby's cry, compared to the less-intense response in reaction to the sound of dogs and cats. The upshot of this is that it simply grates on your attention until it stops (because your brain is telling you to do something about it).
The second half of the equation is in the parent's brain. Our disgust responses get dampened in relation to our own children, and the strongbonds between parent and child mean that they're much less likely to see them for the little heathen that they are.
This is a strong evolutionary tactic, as it makes you less likely to abandon your child in the middle of Tesco, but it does mean that the rest of us without these handy oxytocin spikes find other people's kids intensely annoying.