Sometimes, 'gosh, darn it' just isn't enough

Swearing happens. Specifically, it often happens in painful situations. Researchers had noticed this -- and wondered why.

So they rounded up the required undergraduates. They asked their participants to twice place a hand in uncomfortably cold water for as long as it was bearable, up to five minutes -- once while repeating a word that might be used upon hitting one's thumb with a hammer and once while using a word used  to describe a table.   

The researchers didn't assume there was much benefit in such disinhibition. They were wrong.

They reported: "Swearing increased pain tolerance, increased heart rate and decreased perceived pain compared with not swearing."

The results, from researchers at Keele University in England, were published online Sunday in the journal NeuroReport. Here's the abstract.

And now that we know how beneficial swearing is -- in certain circumstances, anyway (please don't assume the results are an endorsement of socially inappropriate litanies) -- "How Swearing Works" becomes that much more fascinating.

Of note: "While spoken swearwords from different languages don't sound alike, they generally fall into one of two categories. Most of the time, they are either deistic (related to religion) or visceral (related to the human body and its functions)." 

-- Tami Dennis

Photo: Whack your thumb with this and hear the pain relief flow.

Credit: Rick Meyer / Los Angeles Times

 

Comments

[Julie Poplawski]

This is Great F#%!king news!!