In a new study, researchers found that it is not possible to correctly identify an illness in a person simply by listening to the cough.
The research was conducted by a team at the University of Michigan
Previous research has shown that people have the ability to recognize certain illnesses in other people.
For example, a runny nose, red eyes, and clear fatigue are usually signs of the common cold. Fever, sweating, and clear fatigue are likely signs of the flu.
Being able to recognize such symptoms helps people avoid others who are sick, thus avoiding becoming sick themselves.
Recent evidence suggests that people have a tendency to judge the degree of illness in other people who cough.
A loud, long, wet, congestion-expelling cough is more likely to be perceived as a sign of an illness, for example, than a simple quick “clean” cough. But such judgments appear to be misguided.
In this study, the team tested people to see if they could actually tell the difference between people coughing due to a throat tickle versus those who actually had an illness.
The work involved collecting multiple samples of people coughing on YouTube videos.
They then played the clips individually to 200 volunteers. After each clip was played, each volunteer was asked whether the cough was a symptom of a true ailment or just a ticklish throat.
The researchers found that the volunteers were right in their diagnosis roughly half the time—no better than chance.
They suggest that people need to be more careful about judging others in such a way because they are just as likely to be wrong as right.
The lead author of the study is Nicholas M. Michalak from the Department of Psychology.
The study is published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
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