How does swearing affect people

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Close Menu. Submit Search. Cursing negatively affects society. Recent Stories. Navigate Left. Navigate Right. To investigate this theory further, future research should aim to verify the frequency with which such aversive classical conditioning events occur in childhood and assess the relationship between prior punishment for swearing and autonomic arousal in an adequately powered design. We should not be surprised at the lack of differences for pain perception as this may indicate that participants base behavioral decisions of reporting pain onset and removing the hand on similar perceived pain levels, albeit levels that have been modified by repeating a swear word.

On that basis we suggest that measuring subjective pain perception is of limited usefulness in future studies assessing hypoalgesic effects of swearing where behavioral measures such as the cold pressor procedure are employed. The lack of heart rate differences across conditions is at odds with previous studies which have shown elevated heart rate for swearing versus a neutral word Stephens et al.

Repeated presentations of similar tasks, as well as repeated exposure to aversive stimuli, have been found to result in blunted cardiovascular stress reactivity Hughes et al. Blunted cardiovascular stress reactivity refers to the reduction in cardiovascular response to acute physiological or psychological stress Brindle et al. It seems reasonable to suggest that repeated exposure to cold pressor-mediated acute pain may have induced cardiovascular blunting.

In the absence of clear autonomic responses to swearing, we assessed the exploratory hypothesis viii that the effects of swearing on pain tolerance would be mediated by one or more psychological variables, in the form of the emotion, humor, or distraction rating scores.

The latter effect is of interest because swearing in the context of pain is often characterized as a deliberate strategy for distraction, and distraction is recognized as being an effective psychological means of influencing descending pain inhibitory pathways Edwards et al. While swearing was rated as distracting more so than the other words the level of distraction was not related to the pain alleviation effects. Thus, based on our evidence, distraction may not be important in explaining how swearing produces hypoalgesic effects.

While offering no evidential support for a mediation effect, further study assessing mediation of hypoalgesic effects of swearing via emotional arousal, in the absence of changes in heart rate, might fruitfully demonstrate this as a viable mechanism.

Such an effect would be in keeping with previous research finding pain relieving effects of emotional arousal Stephens and Allsop, However, there is a caveat to this. At the study outset we theorized that swearing may increase emotional arousal without specifying the valence of that arousal. During peer review we were directed to literature linking emotion elicitation and pain modulation, and in particular, research by Lefebvre and Jensen who report that inducing a state of negative affect by asking participants to recall a time when they experienced a high degree of worry led to increased ratings of pain from pressure applied to the finger, relative to baseline.

In addition, the same study found that inducing a state of positive affect by asking participants to recall a happy memory led to decreased ratings of pain. It is apparent that emotional modulation of pain can be explained by the two-factor behavioral inhibition system-behavioral activation system BIS-BAS model of pain Jensen et al.

According to the BIS-BAS model, negative affect contributes toward pain-related avoidance behaviors and associated negative cognitions, thereby increasing the subjective experience of pain. Conversely, positive affect contributes toward approach behaviors and positive cognitions, thus decreasing the subjective experience of pain. One limitation of the present study is that the measure of emotion elicitation was not valenced.

This may explain why emotion was not shown to be a mediating variable in the link between swearing and hypoalgesia. Future research should assess both positive and negative emotion arousal due to swearing.

This remains unknown as we did not carry out a manipulation check asking participants whether they considered using these words was swearing. In mitigation there was no systematic variation of the temperature across the four word conditions.

As shown in Table 1 , the starting temperatures for each immersion were fairly consistent, with means ranging from 3. Therefore, variation in temperature is unlikely to have biased the results. A final limitation is that participants may have guessed the aims of the study and consequently demand characteristics may have influenced the results. Nevertheless, due to widespread media exposure for findings of previous studies conducted in the Keele Swear Lab we cannot rule out, nor quantify the extent to which, participant behavior was influenced by expectations of participants.

On the other hand, our study is the first to show that swearing raises pain threshold the time at which pain onset is reported following presentation of a painful stimulus, here immersing the hand in ice-water building on previous findings showing that swearing raises pain tolerance the time at which the hand is removed from the ice-water. It is also the first study to investigate mediation via distraction, finding no evidence that distraction is involved in the mechanism by which swearing brings about pain alleviation.

Instead, our data suggest that swearing brings about its effect on pain alleviation via another route, possibly emotion arousal. However, emotion was not found to mediate the pain alleviation effects of swearing, so this remains a theoretical possibility rather than one that was evidenced. RS and OR contributed to conception and design of the study.

RS organized the database, performed the statistical analysis, and wrote the first draft of the manuscript. OR wrote sections of the manuscript.

Both authors contributed to manuscript revision, read, and approved the submitted version. The funder was not involved in the study design, collection, analysis, interpretation of data, the writing of this article or the decision to submit it for publication. The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Google Scholar. Bowers, J. Swearing, euphemisms, and linguistic relativity. PLoS One 6:e Brindle, R. Exploring the possible mechanisms of blunted cardiac reactivity to acute psychological stress. Byrne, E. London: Profile Books. DeBoer, A. Is a single-item visual analogue scale as valid, reliable and responsive as multi-item scales in measuring quality of life?

Life Res. Edwards, R. The neurobiological underpinnings of coping with pain. Engelthaler, T. Humor norms for 4, English words. Methods 50, — Green, J. Chambers Slang Dictionary. London: Chambers. Horstmann, G. Novelty biases attention and gaze in a surprise trial.

Psychophysics 78, 69— Hughes, B. Cardiovascular stress-response adaption: conceptual basis, empirical findings, and implications for disease processes. Jay, T. The utility and ubiquity of taboo words. Recalling taboo and nontaboo words.

The pragmatics of swearing. Politeness Res. Jennings, J. Publication guidelines for heart rate studies in man. Psychophysiology 18, — The only words that retain their potency are slurs: The N-word. The F-word to deride homosexuals. Young people are more aware and sensitive to such language, so it remains taboo, Bergen said. Traffic Alert. Share story. By Nicole Brodeur. Our travel writer wandered down to find out VIEW Finally, somewhere in Ballard where you can get a beer, plus 7 more Seattle-area bar openings New segment of King County Eastside trail opens near Newcastle Beach Park Skillet caramelized cabbage with yogurt and dill is a surprisingly dazzling dish Rant and Rave: Reader upset with use of garbage can.