Misophonia is a condition characterized by negative affect, intolerance, and functional impairment in response to particular repetitive sounds usually made by others (e.g., chewing, sniffing, pen tapping) and associated stimuli. To date, researchers have largely studied misophonia using self-report measures. As the field is quickly expanding, assessment approaches need to advance to include more objective measures capable of differentiating those with and without misophonia. Although several studies have used sounds as experimental stimuli, few have used standardized stimuli sets with demonstrated reliability or validity. To conduct rigorous research to better understand misophonia, it is important to have an easily accessible, standardized set of acoustic stimuli for use across studies. Accordingly, in the present study, the International Affective Digitized Sounds (IADS-2), developed by Bradley and Lang [1], were used to determine whether participants with misophonia responded to certain standardized sounds differently than a control group. Participants were 377 adults (132 participants with misophonia and 245 controls) recruited from an online platform to complete several questionnaires and respond to four probes (arousal, valence, similarity to personally relevant aversive sounds, and sound avoidance) in response to normed pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral IADS-2 sounds. Findings indicated that compared to controls, participants with high misophonia symptoms rated pleasant and neutral sounds as significantly more (a) arousing and similar to trigger sounds in their everyday life, (b) unpleasant, and (c) likely to be avoided in everyday life. For future scientific and clinical innovation, we include a ranked list of IADS-2 stimuli differentiating responses in those with and without misophonia, which we call the IADS-M.

Group differences in sound ratings were examined using a two-way, mixed analysis of covariance (2 groups x 3 sound types, where “group” corresponds to participants with misophonia or controls, and “sound type” refers to positive, negative, or neutral sounds) on four dependent variables (ratings of valence, arousal, similarity, and avoidance). When statistically significant interactions were observed for sound type, pairwise comparisons were used to determine group differences on each dependent variable, as well as mean differences between sound type on each dependent variable.

All analyses were conducted using IBM SPSS27 statistical software. The first step in the data analytic plan included cleaning and screening the dataset by (a) inspecting all variables for data entry errors (none were observed), and (b) examining the normality of distributions across study variables. Next, bivariate correlations were explored to examine the relationships among variables and determine whether it would be appropriate to use any covariates. The Positive and Negative Affect Scale (PANAS), the Affect Intensity Measure (AIM), and gender were all found to significantly correlate with results and were initially included as covariates. Skewness and kurtosis levels did not exceed acceptable ranges (skewness < 2, kurtosis < 4).28

Finally, we ranked sounds according to a composite Z-score calculated by the sum of the Z scores from mean group differences on each sound for each dependent variable and listed the entire ranked stimuli as “IADS-M” sounds (See Table 2). Sounds listed first (e.g., writing, whistling) reflect the sounds that most differentiate individuals with misophonia from controls. Researchers using the IADS-M can determine how many sounds to include in future studies.

Detailed methods and procedures can be found in the published manuscript.