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Müfreze 2024 findings about the impact of believed sound source on Misophonic responses

In a 2024 experiment, Müfreze tested whether perceived source influences misophonic distress by manipulating whether trigger sounds were labeled as coming from a relative or someone else. Participants rated discomfort to (1) a sound bank recording labeled as a relative, (2) a relative’s voice labeled as someone else, and (3) a relative’s voice labeled as the relative. Sounds labeled as coming from a relative elicited significantly greater distress regardless of their true acoustic origin, and there was no difference between the two “relative-labeled” conditions. The authors concluded that contextual source attribution, rather than acoustic properties, primarily drives subjective disturbance in human-made misophonic triggers. (Müfreze et al., 2024)