So we set out to try to understand this feeling by mining the science in every field. There’s no dearth of relevant research. A vast literature exists on anger, aversion, acoustics, social anthropology, and chemical irritants, but few scientists have thought about these things in terms of how they help explain annoyance. That’s what this book sets out to do. Buzzing flies, car alarms, skunk odors, bad habits, terrible music, idiotic employers, recalcitrant spouses, and more. Tell people you’re writing a book on the annoyingness of modern life, and you’ll soon realize what a tetchy species we humans are.

Cell phones aside, the trouble with cataloging annoyances is that there seem to be few universals in what we find unpleasant. You may like the smell of aftershave, whereas it annoys your spouse. Pleasures can become pet peeves. You may find your spouse’s way of using a knife cute when you first get together and god-awfully annoying after twenty years of marriage. The experience of annoyance is so subjective, so context dependent, that it’s hard to nail down. This may be why researchers don’t tend to think of annoyance as a separate emotion. “From my perspective, annoyance is mild anger,” says James Gross, a psychologist at Stanford University. “And there’s a huge literature on anger.” Paul Rozin, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania, warns, “You have to be careful to distinguish annoyance from aversion.” “It’s hard to distinguish annoyance from frustration,” says University of Florida psychologist Clive Wynne.

Emotions are sometimes plotted on a chart with positive/negative on one axis and arousal/calm on the other axis.