If you think back to the last time you were in pain, your reaction might have been something
like this.
*Bleep*
*Bleep* *Bleep*
*Bleep*
Swearing in response to painful stimuli is a pretty common human behaviour
but for a long time psychologists thought it was a bad idea.
That swearing puts you in a negative state of mind
and makes you think you're in a worse situation than you actually are.
Something called - catastrophising.
To test this, back in 2009, researchers at the university of Keele
came up with an experiment.
You fill up a bucket with ice cold water,
ask people to put their hands in it
and see how long they can withstand the pain.
Woookay.
We decided to re-create this experiment very rigorously
with a self selecting sample of paid junkies here at the Ri.
Woo!
In one condition you let the person use a swearword.
Probably *bleep*.
It's probably *bleep*
*Bleep*
I'll probably go you *bleep*
And in the other they say a neutral word.
Wood.
Legs.
The authors hypothesized that swearing would make the pain worse.
Because of the catastrophising effect.
But as you can see, what they found, was quite the opposite.
I can't do it.
I can't.
*BLEEP* [Laughter off camera]
Flat. Flat. *Bleep*
*Bleep*
That was much worse.
*Bleep*
Legs. Woah.
*Bleep*
Hard. *Bleep* Hard. Hard, hard, no. [Laughter off camera]
Desk. *Bleep*
Desk.
So why does swearing help you withstand pain?
This is Dr Emma Byrne, a scientists and author of the book
"Swearing is Good for You".
In the trial where they swear, they can keep their hands in ice water
much longer, on average about half as long again as when they're not swearing.
And what's more, afterwards when they're asked how painful the ice water felt,
they will say that, actually while swearing it feels less intense, it feels less painful.
It felt like it was the same amount of pain but more manageable.
I say we should all swear all the time, sorry mum.
In some follow up experiments the authors found
that the effect still holds for people who don't tend to swear much in daily life.
So what's going on here?
We know that swearing is a highly emotive part of language.
There might be something emotional going on.
But we can also measure emotions outside of the brain.
We can spot them in our physiology.
Your hands getting sweaty or your heart rate rises.
And sure enough, when people are doing the swearing condition,
if you measure things like their galvanic skin response
or how sweaty their palms are getting.
Of if you measure their heart rate, you'll see that they are
reacting physiologically to an emotional stimulus.
Far more than they are in the neutral condition.
One idea for why swearing helps with pain is that
saying these emotionally charged words triggers our fight or flight response,
hence the increased heart rate, by putting us into a state a bit like aggression.
To explore this idea further, the same group designed an experiment
to put people into a more aggressive state by making them play
the first person shooter video game Medal of Honor.
Compared with participants that played a golfing game, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07,
the first person shooters ranked more highly on measures of aggression,
had higher heart rates and were able to withstand the ice bucket experiment for longer.
Which seems to support the idea that something like aggression
could be involved in easing the pain response.
But things aren't completely clear cut. In another more recent study,
swearing was found to increase people's strength and stamina on physical tasks.
But in this test, the authors didn't find any
of the physiological responses associated with fight or flight,
such as increased heart rate.
*Bleep*
They hypothesized that perhaps swearing acts as a distraction
or maybe makes people feel less inhibited
and that's why their physical performance increased.
For now, exactly why swearing has these effects
on pain tolerance and strength remains unknown.
Essentially *bleep* knows.
Hey guys, thanks for watching.
We tried something a bit new with this video
so let us know what you think in the comments below.
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