There are a million reasons to drop an f-bomb or seven throughout the day, and science encourages it! You read that right, science says that swearing can actually reduce your pain and lower your stress levels. Let’s get to the bottom of this.
A study was done at Keele University by senior lecturer in psychology Dr. Richard Stephens, and he did so by sticking 67 of his students in an ice-cold bath. During the study, one group was allowed to swear while the other group was only allowed to say neutral words. And in the group that was allowed to swear, Stephens found that their pain threshold increased by 50%. On average, students who were allowed to swear could tolerate the pain for approximately two minutes, while those who were not allowed to swear, could only tolerate the pain for about one minute and 15 seconds.
When interviewed for Men’s Health, Stephens said, “swearing triggers a well-known stress-induced analgesia, it’s part of the fight-or-flight response. Adrenaline is released, the heart pumps faster and we become more enabled to overcome an aggressor or make a swift getaway. Swearing helps many people better tolerate pain.”
But, of course, there is a but here, the effects were greatest on those who only swear occasionally, versus those who swear quite frequently. As for us, we certainly know which category we fall into, but if you don’t swear often, this is good news for you and justification for that potty mouth next time you hit your funny bone just right.
Swearing can help us better cope with overwhelming feelings in general as well. Dr. Raffaello Antonino, a counseling psychologist and the clinical director and founder of Therapy Central explains: “The way swearing works, in these circumstances, is as a form of coping mechanism to deal with the emotional consequences of various difficult situations, especially those we have little or no control over and that cause us to feel disappointed, that we’ve been treated [unfairly], experience persistent or acute physical pain, and so on.” So in situations such as receiving a nasty e-mail from our boss or when someone cuts us off in traffic, swearing is a way to release difficult emotions when a situation is otherwise out of our hands.
“It’s important to point out that although swearing will not resolve our issues practically, it can help calm and resolve our internal emotional imbalance caused by those experiencing these external issues,” he said. “In essence, swearing can be an effective short-term emotion-regulation tool.”