Swearing Can Actually Make You Feel Better
Posted on Saturday, July 18th, 2009 and is filed under Political & General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Researchers from Keele University School of Psychology state that swearing (or cussing) can make you feel better and increase your pain tolerance. Huh?
If you have a “mouth like a sailor” or your parents wanted to wash your mouth out with soap when you were growing up, there is now a valid reason for using profanity: It makes you feel better according to a new study published in NeuroReport.
Researchers from Keele University noted that swearing is a common response to pain and were surprised that no one had ever made a connection between the two. They said that at first, they thought swearing exaggerated the effect of pain. But instead, it does the opposite.
“Swearing has been around for centuries and is an almost universal human linguistic phenomenon,” says Dr Richard Stephens. “It taps into emotional brain centres and appears to arise in the right brain, whereas most language production occurs in the left cerebral hemisphere of the brain. Our research shows one potential reason why swearing developed and why it persists.”
So they set out to make the connection: they rounded up 64 volunteers and had them submerge their hands into a tub of ice water for as long as possible (ouch!). They were then asked to use their favorite swear word. They then repeated the experiment, using another common word. The researchers found that when the volunteers used a swear word, they were able to keep their hands submerged in the ice water longer.
Andrea Levy, 45, of New York, said that she swears when she hurts herself, drops something or make a mistake, although she admits that cussing doesn’t make a woman sound classy. Her favorite cuss words? F#$k and S*#t!
While researchers aren’t completely clear why swearing increases pain tolerance, they believe that it triggers the natural “fight-or-flight” response.
