You just stubbed your toe, hard, on the corner of that stupid table again. What's the first thing out of your mouth? If it's something you wouldn't see printed in a family newspaper, you may actually be doing yourself a favor. Foul language may be decreasing your pain, according to a new study.
Psychologist Richard Stephens of Keele University in the United Kingdom first started thinking about the connection between swearing and pain during the birth of his now-5-year-old daughter. At an agonizing point in labor, his wife began cursing up a storm, he says, though she felt bad about it later. "The midwives said, 'Don't apologize, we hear that kind of language on the maternity ward all the time.' "
Stephens couldn't find anything in the psychology literature about swearing and pain, so he designed a series of experiments. He and colleagues asked undergraduates to write down five words they might say when they hit their fingers with a hammer and five words they might use to describe a table. The students then held one hand in a bucket of ice water for as long as they could--a common test for pain tolerance--once while saying a swear word from their hammer list and once while saying a word from the table list. "F-ck and sh-t were the two most popular ones," says Stephens. "A few 'buggers,' a few 'bastards.' "
The team found that people were able to keep a hand in the water longer while saying the curse words than while repeating "brown" or "square" or "wooden." Men could leave their hands in, on average, for 30% longer when swearing; women averaged 44% longer. The sex difference could be because men generally swear more often than women, says Stephens, and thus it is a more powerful expression for women. The group's findings will appear in the 5 August issue of NeuroReport.
So how does swearing ease pain? Stephens notes that some experiments have linked pain tolerance and aggression, so if cursing increases aggression--like a coach's profanity-laced psych-up speech before a game--it may also alleviate hurt. He says he would like to test whether shouting the swear words has a different effect than saying them.
Psychologist Jamie Rhudy of the University of Tulsa in Oklahoma thinks the researchers might be on to something. "Our bodies have very elaborate systems for regulating pain," he says. The swear words might turn on circuits in the brain that are able to tone down pain. He cautions, though, that swearing in the lab might not represent the real experience of swearing when you hurt yourself in private. The social context of swearing is so important, he notes, it might affect some people emotionally just to swear with someone watching, a response that could affect their perception of pain.
Still, Jacqueline Ellis, a professor of nursing at the University of Ottawa in Canada who has studied how people respond to pain, isn't quite ready to apply the findings to her work in pediatrics. "I don't know if it's appropriate for the midwives to tell the patients, 'Every time you have a contraction, start swearing' or to tell the 5-year-olds, 'Here's a list of words!' "
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