Sensitivity to Chewing Sounds

Your result, the one DNA position behind it, and what the research says.

5/10 confidence.

About Sensitivity to Chewing Sounds

Strong irritation at specific everyday sounds, chewing above all, is common enough to have a name, and it appears to have some inherited component. This position turned up in a large consumer genetics study of self-reported sensitivity to chewing sounds. The association is weak, roughly a 20 percent shift in odds, and it comes from a single source rather than a body of independent replications, so it belongs on the curiosity end of the catalog rather than the explanatory end.

Good to know: The reported effect is small, around 1.2 times the odds per copy. It rests on one large self-reported study rather than independent replications. Strong reactions to everyday sounds are common and mostly unexplained by genetics.

Fun fact: Repetitive everyday sounds like chewing and pen-clicking are the ones people report finding hardest to ignore, well ahead of louder noises.

Discovery: The association was reported by a consumer genetics study of self-reported sound sensitivity.

The Variant

The single variant behind this trait

Gene: TENM2

Variant (rsID): rs2937573

Location: Chr 5:167,044,193

dbSNP rs2937573

The studies

A genome-wide association study of a rage-related misophonia symptom and the genetic link with audiological traits, psychiatric disorders, and personality (Smit DJA et al., Frontiers in neuroscience, 2022)

Other lifestyle traits

Earlobe Size: A variant on chromosome 1 linked in a large study to whether the earlobe hangs free or is joined to the head, and in one much smaller study to lobe size.

Earwax & Body Odor: A single ABCC11 variant sets whether your earwax is wet or dry - and tracks with how much underarm odor you produce.

Sneezing at Bright Light: A common variant linked to the photic sneeze reflex, the sudden urge to sneeze on stepping from shade into bright sunlight.

Back to All Traits

Content updated September 2026.

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