Chewing With Mouth Open Voted Most Annoying Habit

They're bloody annoying aren't they, people? But what it the most annoying habit of us humanoids.

We decided to poll you lot to find out, after drawing up a shortlist of 16 that reads as follows:

. Weeing on the toilet seat

. Finishing someone's sentence

. Leaving the top off toothpaste

. Double-dipping the tea spoon

. Not indicating

. Knuckle-cracking

. Chewing with mouth open

. Spitting

. Slurping brews

. Leaving wet towels on the bed

. Not replacing toilet roll

. Putting chocolate wrappers back in the tub

. Nose-picking

. Using phone mid-conversation

. Leaving crumbs in the bed

. Drinking from the carton

A lot of infuriating behaviours right there, I'm sure you'll agree.

LADbible

From four quarter-finals, the following fought off stiff competition to make it to the final: spitting, not replacing toilet roll, chewing with mouth open and using a phone mid-conversation.

But in the grand final, chewing with your gob open proved a decisive winner, receiving more than double as many votes as spitting in second place.

It's got everything hasn't it really? It looks horrible, it sounds disgusting and there's even the risk of getting hit with a bit of projectile grub if the idiot thinks whatever they have to say is so important that it can't wait until post-swallow.

If it really grates on you though (one person commented on the poll saying the habit gave them urges to punch throats) then you could possibly have an actual disorder, called misophonia.

The condition was first named in 2001 and sufferers can be sent into a rage by certain trigger noises.

According to a report in the journal Current Biology, scans of misophonia sufferers showed changes in brain activity when a 'trigger' sound was heard.

Pexels/cottonbro

The report also indicated that people with the condition have an abnormality in their emotional control mechanism, which causes their brains to go into overdrive on hearing the individual trigger sounds.

The sounds were also responsible for increasing the heart rate and amount of perspiration produced by some sufferers.

Tim Griffiths - Professor of Cognitive Neurology at Newcastle University and UCL and one of the authors of the study - commented: "I was part of the sceptical community myself until we saw patients in the clinic and understood how strikingly similar the features are - I hope this will reassure sufferers."

So open-mouthed chewers - pack it in ya filthy animals, yeah?

Topics: Interesting, Community

Jake Massey

Jake Massey is a journalist at LADbible. He graduated from Newcastle University, where he learnt a bit about media and a lot about living without heating. After spending a few years in Australia and New Zealand, Jake secured a role at an obscure radio station in Norwich, inadvertently becoming a real-life Alan Partridge in the process. From there, Jake became a reporter at the Eastern Daily Press. Jake enjoys playing football, listening to music and writing about himself in the third person.

@jakesmassey