Swearing – increases pain tolerance

11^th November 2009 - Hoping not to stub his toe or trip on stage, psychologist Dr Richard Stephens will today give a public lecture about why swearing can help us cope with pain.

It’s a familiar scenario: you bang your head, knock your knee or bite your tongue and often the first instinct is to shout out a few inappropriate words.

Ask any midwife; she’ll tell you the secrets of the labour ward.

Dr Stephens of Keele University’s School of Psychology and his colleagues, John Atkins and Andrew Kingston, say they were surprised to discover that no links had been established between swearing and the actual experience of physical pain.

They decided to test a theory that because swearing overstates, embellishes and exaggerates the severity of pain, it would decrease an individual’s tolerance.

Bad language lab

The team enlisted the help of 64 undergraduate volunteers to test the theory. They were asked to submerge their hand in ice cold water for as long as they could stand it while repeating a swear word of their choice. Later, they were asked to repeat the experiment, this time using a more commonplace word that they would use to describe a table.

Despite their initial expectations, the researchers found that the volunteers were able to keep their hands submerged in the icy water for a longer period of time when repeating the swear word.

On average, the students could tolerate the cold for one minute and 15 seconds when they used a neutral word compared with nearly two minutes when they swore.

The researchers admit they are not certain why the link between pain and swearing exists. However, they believe that the pain-lessening effect occurs because swearing triggers our inbuilt ‘fight or flight’ response.

Expletives repeated

Dr Stephens is elaborating on his findings during a public lecture today at Keele University in Staffordshire.

Commenting on the research in a press release, Dr Stephens says “Swearing has been around for centuries and is an almost universal human linguistic phenomenon. 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.”

The original research was published in summer in the journal NeuroReport. At the time Dr Stephens told BBC radio that his findings were not an excuse to swear in everyday speech. “Swearing is emotional language, but if you over use it it loses the emotion attached to it,” he said.

Still, the next time you hit your thumb with a nail, you’ll have a properly researched reason for turning the air blue.