Social context in misophonia: Does misophonia impact social judgements (& do social judgements impact misophonia)?

Misophonia is a sound sensitivity disorder characterised by strong negative reactions to specific sounds (e.g., chewing). Previous studies have suggested a link between social judgements and misophonia, in that misophonia arises not simply from auditory/acoustic processing but also from how an individual interprets the meaning of trigger sounds within their social world. In our study, we experimentally manipulated our participants' social perceptions of various people making sounds, to explore its impact on misophonia. In reverse, we also examined how sounds influenced misophonics' social evaluations of those same individuals, revealing a bidirectional relationship between sound intolerance and social cognition. We found that social judgements affected the aversiveness of trigger sounds, since sounds were judged as more aversive if they came from people who had been depicted as socially negative. We also found that-when no sounds were present-social judgements made by people with misophonia were entirely typical (i.e., no different from controls). Finally, misophonics perceived people as less pleasant if they produced noisy eating sounds, and these differences were especially apparent if prior perceptions of those people were positive. Together, our findings suggest that unpleasant sounds are harder to tolerate for misophonics when they come from unlikeable individuals, and that even highly likeable people can be judged more harshly if they produce trigger sounds.