While most might use the words quiet and peaceful to describe the area around UConn, a new study on the relationship between noise and culture has found that Latine students here tend to seek noisier places to study and recreate as compared to their white peers.

It’s a theory that Nairán Ramírez-Esparza, associate professor in the psychological sciences department, has had for some time: Those who are Latine engage in more collectivistic behaviors, which are noisier by nature, than those who are white and of European descent and favor more individualistic behaviors.

“All of this is associated with the cultural values you learn when you’re growing up,” she says. “Oftentimes, Latine individuals are raised in households where many people reside, so they’re used to noise, and they like it. Consequently, even when they live in a quiet place like UConn, they still seek environments and choose behaviors that produce more noise.”

The study, “Effects of cultural dynamics on everyday acoustic environments,” was published this fall in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America and included associate professors Erika Skoe and Adrián Garcia-Sierra from UConn’s speech, language, and hearing sciences department, along with researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and St. Lawrence University. Funding came from the Office of the Vice President for Research (OVPR) Research Excellence Program.

Ramírez-Esparza says previous studies have found that neighborhoods with lower socioeconomic status experience higher levels of noise pollution than wealthier ones, and these lower socioeconomic neighborhoods tend to comprise mostly minority populations, including Latine individuals, who are more likely to work in loud environments.

But in this new research, she notes, the goal was to eliminate socioeconomic factors as much as possible and consider only the influence of culture on noise level to determine whether people choose noisy environments based on their culture and what they’re accustomed to.

Seventy-four UConn students took part in the study, 43 of whom were of European background and 31 who identify as Latine, representing the countries of Mexico, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Peru, Colombia, Guatemala, Argentina, Bolivia, Costa Rica, Cuba, El Salvador, and Puerto Rico.

The students wore small recorders to capture the sounds around them within a 6-to-8-foot radius and kept them on at least eight hours, or up to 16 hours, on each of two days, one weekday and one weekend day. They also kept a daily activity log to help researchers match behaviors with the recorded sounds in determining the amount of time students spent with others, in groups, and socializing.

“We were able to demonstrate that being from lower socioeconomic status does not relate to having more collectivistic behaviors. That is associated with your cultural background,” Ramírez-Esparza says. “Sometimes people choose noisy environments because they want to be connected to others and be part of a group.”

The difference between the Latine and white students was small, she admits, but it’s still scientifically significant and can help explain why a Latine student might choose to study for finals in a busy cafeteria rather than the library’s quiet study area.

“If an American were to go into a Starbucks in Mexico, they would never be able to work because everyone is talking. Whereas, if you go into a Starbucks in the U.S., people are working alone on their computers and not with other people, so it’s a quieter environment, which someone of European descent might find more suitable for work,” she says.

Anecdotally, Ramírez-Esparza says many of her Latine students go home on weekends to be with their parents and family members, a behavior that likely is culturally related and bolsters the finding that Latine individuals seek out more collectivistic behaviors.

“Of course, there is a lot of variability in every culture,” she cautions. “We have students who are Latine who like to be alone in quiet environments, and we have European American students who do well in noisy environments. We’re talking about generalities within each group.”

In writing their paper, the researchers cited a September 2022 story by writer Xochitl Gonzalez and published in The Atlantic, “Why do rich people love quiet? The sound of gentrification is silence,” which points out the common belief that noise is bad and quiet is good.

The story argues that not all noise is bad, and researchers agree, especially since the decibel level of the sound on the student recorders was within safe range.

“Most research, including audiology, has focused on WEIRD societies: Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic,” says study co-author Carlos R. Benítez-Barrera from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “So, the treatments that have been developed have been built in that very specific culture and that type of culture is least representative of the entire world.

“We need to start taking into account how culture affects everything, all aspects of life,” he continues, from developing cochlear implants designed for Latine children and bettering interventions to help them improve language skills inside noisier environments.

Meanwhile, Ramírez-Esparza says she and Benítez-Barrera are seeking additional auditory data from elsewhere in the country and the world to see if the relationship between noise and culture holds beyond Storrs.

It also would be interesting, she adds, to look at whether Latine males and Latine females engage in collectivistic behaviors at the same rate and whether those who are introverted and extroverted also have the same exposure to sound.

“There are a lot of open questions. Once we have the data, we could probably start exploring those ideas,” Ramírez-Esparza says.