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Yet new research in the field suggests that there are universal triggers, behaviors that almost all of us find inappropriate. Overhearing a one-sided cellphone conversation, for example, tops the list of irritants, transcending generations, gender and cultures.While this may seem unsurprising — people tend to raise their voices on cellphone calls, and their migratory nature can feel as though someone is cavalierly invading our personal space — there’s a cognitive reason they particularly grate: Our survival once depended on predicting what someone would say or do next.“You might think that when you’re having a conversation with someone, your brain is focused on listening,” the authors write. “In fact, your brain is focused on guessing what the person is going to say.”It’s unconscious and automatic — as is the desire to predict when something is going to end. The excruciation of overhearing a cellphone call isn’t just related to the banality of the conversation, or the pitch and volume of the voice — it’s hoping to God that it’ll be over soon, but having no sense how likely that is.

To be a New Yorker is to be in a perpetual state of annoyance. Leaving doesn’t help — if anything, it only exacerbates the tendency to be annoyed.

Like many marketers, General Mills and other food companies are rewriting the rules for reaching children in the Internet age. These companies, often selling sugar cereals and junk food, are using multimedia games, online quizzes and cellphone apps to build deep ties with young consumers. And children like Lesly are sharing their messages through e-mail and social networks, effectively acting as marketers.

When these tactics revolve around food, and blur the line between advertising and entertainment, they are a source of intensifying concern for nutrition experts and children’s advocates — and are attracting scrutiny from regulators. The Federal Trade Commission has undertaken a study of food marketing to children, due out this summer, while the White House Task Force on Childhood Obesity has said one reason so many children are overweight is the way junk food is marketed.

Critics say the ads, from major companies like Unilever and Post Foods, let marketers engage children in a way they cannot on television, where rules limit commercial time during children’s programming. With hundreds of thousands of visits monthly to many of these sites, the ads are becoming part of children’s daily digital journeys, often flying under the radar of parents and policy makers, the critics argue.