Annoyance threshold judgments were obtained by exposing an individual to noise for three minutes and asking him to adjust the intensity to the level which, if any louder, would annoy him if it were present most of the time where he was working.In one experiment, 21 people made judgments about 13 bands of noise which covered the frequency range of 50 to 13 000 cps, and subsequently made sets of equal loudness matches. No differences were found between annoyance threshold curves and equal loudness curves. In a second experiment, each of 162 people made one annoyance judgment. When these annoyance thresholds were transformed into equivalent loudness terms, the resultant annoyance threshold curve varied reliably with frequency only in that the threshold on the highest band (6600–9000 cps) was reliably lower than those on lower frequency bands.Office workers who had once worked in noisy situations as well as those working in noisy situations at the time of the experiment gave thresholds about 15 db higher than did people who had only worked in office‐type situations.Within a group who had worked only in quiet situations, those who tried to imagine themselves in an actual working situation gave thresholds that averaged about 15 db higher than the thresholds of those who did not.