According to a study conducted by the University of Michigan Department of Psychology, students who frequently interrupt entire lecture halls to ask frivolous or irrelevant questions are much more likely to have been emotionally neglected by their parents as children.
Dr. Maria Hernandez, head of the study, gaining an understanding of people who demand that a professor’s lecture be brought to a halt is the first step in ending their disruptions.
“What we’re seeing here is the manifestation of a childhood spent in the shadows,” explained Hernandez. “When children aren’t given attention growing up, they often become adults with a deep-set need to impede the learning of their peers in order to ask the professor about a trivial matter––thereby rendering themselves the momentary object of someone else’s thought and concern.”
Researchers hypothesize that as students hear their own voices ring out across fifty rows of irritated peers, they are able to simulate the undivided attention and even positive affirmation previously denied to them by their parents. Students’ reported satisfaction nearly doubled when their interruption included a humorous comment at which the professor felt obligated to laugh.
At press time, it was revealed that these people are likely to be the same ones who send videos of themselves to the Michigan Campus Snapchat story.
