In schizophrenia, for example, the impairment of sensory gating or inhibition of selective attention may be considered a marker for noise sensitivity, reflecting a reduced ability to tune out goal-irrelevant background noise. This provides an opportunity to further explore the etiology of noise sensitivity, where phenomenological accounts of noise-induced distress can be mapped back to maladaptive cognitive processes associated with brain dysfunction. Unsurprisingly then, noise sensitivity is a common symptom in many psychological disorders, including anxiety disorder, autistic spectrum disorder, major depressive disorder, schizophrenia, and traumatic brain injury. When extreme, it is characterized by exhaustion, withdrawal, helplessness, and distress. Noise-sensitive individuals are more likely to report symptoms of inadequacy, depression, anxiety, sensitivity, anger, tension, inferiority, and nervousness than noise-resistant individuals. Noise sensitivity aggregates in families and the estimate of heritability (36%) is not associated with auditory acuity, and mediates the relationship between noise and health.

Sensitive individuals are more likely to attend to sound, evaluate sound negatively (e.g., as threatening or annoying), have stronger emotional reactions to sound and, consequently, greater difficulty habituating. Research indicates that noise sensitive individuals are more susceptible to noise-induced annoyance and/or noise-induced awakenings. Reported estimates of noise-sensitive individuals have varied from 20% to 40% (see for a review), with the prevalence of high noise sensitive individuals being about 12%. Pervasive, or trait, noise sensitivity manifests as a stable personality attribute describing tolerance to sound, measured on a continuum bracketed by individuals who are extremely noise reactive (i.e., high noise sensitivity) or extremely noise i.e., low sensitivity). What is judged as noise and what is not is highly subjective, and the literature contains numerous treatises exploring the underlying individual differences in this regard (e.g.,) Job, 1999 conceptualized noise sensitivity as internal states (be they physiological or psychological) that typically amplify arousal to noise. Noise is unwanted sound, that is, sound judged as undesirable, irritating, distracting, and discordant with one's expectations, or interfering with wanted sounds. The findings caution against pooling data across genders, not controlling for age, and using personality dimensions in isolation. However, additional analyses indicated that the influence of gender and age must be considered when examining the relationship between personality and noise sensitivity. Furthermore, the Big Five personality dimensions (neuroticism, extroversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness) had an independent effect on noise sensitivity, which were linear. Overall, the Big Five accounted for 33% of the variance in noise sensitivity, with the Introversion-Extroversion dimension explaining the most variability. The current study investigated the relationship between the Big Five personality dimensions and noise sensitivity using the 240-item NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI) and 35-item The Noise-Sensitivity-Questionnaire (NoiSeQ) scales, respectively. Noise sensitivity refers to physiological and psychological internal states of an individual that increase the degree of reactivity to noise in general.

Sensitivity to unwanted sounds is common in general and clinical populations.

Auditory sensitivity and anxiety