Noise Annoyance, Personality, and Health: A Longitudinal Analysis

Noise annoyance and its relation to health outcomes have been studied extensively. The vast majority of studies in this field use cross-sectional data. Such data does not allow investigation of temporal effects or the direction of these effects. It is reasonable to expect that the effects of noise on health build up over time. Moreover, noise may not only impact health outcomes, but health outcomes may also impact the sensitivity to noise – hence flipping the direction of the effect. Further adding to the complexity of the relationship between noise and health outcomes is the fact that personality traits may influence re-ported noise annoyance. This study aims to shed light on the accumulative effects of noise annoyance on health, as well as the bidirectional relationships between noise annoyance and health. To do so, we analyze eight years of data from the Dutch Longitudinal Internet Studies for the Social Sciences (LISS) panel. Specifically, we conduct a Longitudinal Latent Class Analysis to identify annoyance profiles and analyze the effect of Big Five personality traits on the likelihood of belonging to the different annoyance profiles. Furthermore, we use Cross-Lagged Panel Models to analyze whether changes in noise annoy-ance precede changes in health outcomes or vice versa. We find three different profiles of noise annoy-ance, namely chronically annoyed people, occasionally annoyed people, and people who are generally not annoyed. Noise annoyance was found to be relatively stable over time. Regarding personality traits, we find that extraversion and emotional stability decrease the chance of belonging to the cluster of chronically annoyed persons, while openness has the opposite effect. Finally, chronic annoyance shows a significant effect on self-reported heart complaints and sleeping problems, while the effects of noise annoyance profiles on high blood pressure and heart attacks are insignificant.