{"id":5748,"date":"2026-03-13T02:38:17","date_gmt":"2026-03-13T02:38:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mister-story.wordpress.blogicmedia.com\/?p=5748"},"modified":"2026-03-13T02:38:17","modified_gmt":"2026-03-13T02:38:17","slug":"why-does-the-sound-of-fingernails-on-chalkboard-make-us-go-cringe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.misters-story.com\/why-does-the-sound-of-fingernails-on-chalkboard-make-us-go-cringe\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Does The Sound Of Fingernails On Chalkboard Make Us Go Cringe?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Few <strong>sounds make us feel so cringe<\/strong>\nlike Nails scratching across a chalkboard, or a fork scraped on a plate, or a\nmetal chair dragged across a tiled floor. We not only hear these types of\nsounds, but we can feel them, and they make us feel so cringe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But what is so wrong with this kind of scraping that\nmakes it offensive to our brain that many people say it&#8217;s actually painful for\nthem?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>According to a study that won a 2006 Ig Nobel Prize,\nin the sound of fingernails scraping chalkboards. The middle audio range\nfrequencies were the most irritating, and these were similar to the\nchimpanzee&#8217;s warning cries. In the research, it&#8217;s speculated that human\nreactions to these sounds have roots in escape response feeling from our\nevolutionary past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>According to the University of Salford&#8217;s acoustic\nengineer Trevor Cox, he says the range that is in question is 2000-5000 Hz.\nThis range resonates the ear canal, this makes the sound transmit very\nefficiently. This range of frequency hits us when our ears are particularly\nsensitive, and there we have a more robust response of cringer or painful\nfeeling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>According to another study published in 2012, it was\nfound that these sound frequencies activate the amygdala, part of the brain,\nwhich is involved in fear responses, this in return, creates intense reactions\nin the auditory cortex.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Another characteristic that triggers Grima or the\ncringe effect is roughness. When we scrape fingernails on a chalkboard, we have\nour nails cause roughness catching on the blackboard. It&#8217;s something similar to\nhow violin bow works. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So, there are many studies done on this subject to\nfind out<strong> why we feel cringe whenever we run our nails on the\nchalkboard.<\/strong> Many reasons have been cited, still to find the exact\ncause, there is more research needed on this topic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Few sounds make us feel so cringe like Nails scratching across a chalkboard, or a fork scraped on a plate, or a metal chair dragged across a tiled floor. We not only hear these types of sounds, but we can feel them, and they make us feel so cringe. But what is so wrong with [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":5749,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5748","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-humor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.misters-story.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5748","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.misters-story.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.misters-story.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.misters-story.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.misters-story.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5748"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.misters-story.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5748\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5750,"href":"https:\/\/www.misters-story.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5748\/revisions\/5750"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.misters-story.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5749"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.misters-story.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.misters-story.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.misters-story.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}