Swearing relieves pain – but don't overdo the curses

4^th May 2011 - People who frequently use swear words may be denying themselves the pain-relieving effect of using expletives when they hurt themselves, say psychologists.

Dr Richard Stephens of Keele University, who first became interested in the subject when he hit his finger with a hammer during DIY, demonstrated two years ago how swearing can help people cope with pain.

Analgesia

"We think that when people swear it makes them feel more aggressive and stirs a flight or flight reaction in themselves," he tells us. Stephens says this ancient response can create stress-induced analgesia, similar to what Stone Age man might have experienced when confronted by a bear. "He had the adrenalin surge and he had to fight the bear or flee away - and one component of fight or flight is increased pain tolerance, which makes complete sense because you will be better able to flee or fight if you're not so susceptible to pain."

Stephens says after the publication of his original paper, he was frequently asked whether this pain-relieving effect was influenced by how often people swore in their day-to-day life. So he and student Claudia Umland set out to discover whether habitual cursers benefited less as a result of using bad language more frequently.

Swearing questionnaire

They recruited 71 people aged between 18 and 46 to repeat the earlier experiment. However, this time participants also completed a questionnaire about their swearing habits. Each person was then tested to see whether they could hold their hand under cold water (5 degrees C) for up to five minutes while either repeating a swear word or a non-swear word.

After the experiment the participants were tested on how painful they had found the experience.

Swearing pain relief

The researchers found that 73% of participants kept their hand in the cold water for longer if they repeated a swear word compared with repeating a neutral word. On average, participants held their hand in the ice-cold water for 31 seconds longer if they swore.

They also found that the more often people swear in daily life, the less extra time they were able to hold their hand in the icy water when swearing, compared with when not swearing.

"When we ran the analysis that we did last time about how long people keep their hands in the cold water for - and included swearing frequency as an extra variable in that - the people who don't swear very much get a much bigger benefit when they do swear in the experiment than when they don't swear in the experiment," Stephens says.

He adds that "as you go up the daily swearing frequency, the difference gets less and less until eventually - at the top end of the range we had - they're getting next to no benefit from swearing".

The latest research is being presented at the British Psychological Society’s Annual Conference.