Swearing Provides Pain Relief, Say Scientists 230
Hugh Pickens writes "Scientific American reports that although cursing is notoriously decried in the public debate, scientists have discovered that swearing may serve an important function in relieving pain. 'Swearing is such a common response to pain that there has to be an underlying reason why we do it,' says Richard Stephens of Keele University in England. A study measured how long college students could keep their hands immersed in cold water. During the chilly exercise, they could repeat an expletive of their choice or chant a neutral word. When swearing, the 67 student volunteers reported less pain and on average endured about 40 seconds longer. How swearing achieves its physical effects is unclear, but the researchers speculate that brain circuitry linked to emotion is involved. Earlier studies have shown that unlike normal language, which relies on the outer few millimeters in the left hemisphere of the brain, expletives hinge on evolutionarily ancient structures buried deep inside the right half like the amygdala, an almond-shaped group of neurons that can trigger a fight-or-flight response in which our heart rate climbs and we become less sensitive to pain."
I can see you are in pain... (Score:5, Insightful)
FUCK!
What if you don't fucking give a shit about curses (Score:1, Insightful)
One man's expletive is another man's standard vocabulary. I don't see how you can define normal language outside of the individual.
Re:I call bullshit... (Score:3, Insightful)
Selection Bias? (Score:3, Insightful)
So they are letting people self-select themselves into the experimental and control groups... doesn't this bias the experimental results pretty badly? Wouldn't it have been more effective to ask a group specifically to cuss their head off and ask a group specifically to refrain from swearing?
Re:Effectiveness for emotional stress? (Score:3, Insightful)
Swearing is good for us, eh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Okay, I guess I'd best get my daily dose:
Slashdot, fucking fix your fucking broken site, or fire the fucking incompetent fool doing the coding.
Re:I call bullshit... (Score:2, Insightful)
But are they sure the swearing is the cause of that activity in the brain, or is that activity caused by the successful removal of stress which swearing just happens to make easier to achieve. Chanting "neutral" words might in fact have the opposite effect of relieving stress, since you're forcably trying to ignore the fact that YOUR HAND IS HURTING. I didn't RTFA like a true slashdotter, but if they didn't have one, they should have included an extra group of people where were forced to keep their traps shut and see how they responded compared to the other groups. ...
And another group that was also silent, but was allowed to punch other members of the group in the face to relieve stress.
Re:It's not complicated. (Score:1, Insightful)
Swearing out loud in front of other people can carry some baggage and consequence. It's risky social behavior. Any risk taking can generate some adrenaline. The adrenaline makes it easier to tolerate the pain..
I don't think there's time to think about consequences when a hammer hits your finger.
Re:It's not complicated. (Score:3, Insightful)
Swearing when you're alone is only swearing because... you think of it as swearing. Which means that the part of your brain that's choosing and using those words is doing it in that context: knowing that they're words set aside for a specific sort of expression.
Re:I call bullshit... (Score:2, Insightful)
Another possibility is that the "swearing" group got to do what came naturally, so they could concentrate on staying in the game. While the "neutral word" group had to focus on some unfamiliar word ("doppelganger", for instance) while simultaneously getting their mitts frozen. Doppelganger, doppelganger, that's way harsh. Or....
Damn you FUCKING SACK of PHD SHIT!!!
Re:SLOW FUCKING JAVASCRIPT (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Cursing, Not Swearing (Score:4, Insightful)
Meh. I live in Quebec. Tabarnac de sacrement de calice (roughly tabernacle of the sacrament of the chalice) is about the worst thing you can say. Swearing seems to fit much better.
Re:I call bullshit... (Score:4, Insightful)
It might also partially explain why people going through (say) cigarette withdraw symptoms are rude motherfuckers. They need a quick and immediate release channel for what they used to relieve via smoking. Then they have to re-learn how to be emotionally pleasant without the drugs.
Anonymous (Score:1, Insightful)
Anything that makes you focus on something else than the cause of pain will provide relief. Scratching your back, masturbating, playing word games, you name it.
Re:SLOW FUCKING JAVASCRIPT (Score:2, Insightful)
Maybe it's to prevent idiots from posting too many comments.
Correlation or causation? (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe this simply demonstrates that the type of people who would choose a neutral word to say are likely to have a lower tolerance for pain?
Re:I call bullshit... (Score:3, Insightful)
Since the TFA doesn't go into the study design I can't be sure how controlled this study was. It sounds like the subjects could choose whether to swear or to chant a neutral word. So, perhaps all they've proven is that the type of personality that makes one endure pain better also makes you more prone to swearing. If they picked 100 people at random, and then randomly assigned each one to the swearing vs neutral groups this would be less of an issue. Then again, it probably wouldn't hurt to do it both ways - and see what the results are.
These kinds of psychological tests can be very difficult to control.
Here's another test - test the subjects independently, and give each one the exact same word to shout. Tell half the subjects that the word is a really nasty expression in some-obscure-language, and tell half of them that the word just means soda. That would better test whether it is the idea of breaking a social norm that provides the relief.
Re:It's not complicated. (Score:3, Insightful)
Just the ruling party's discussions, this very past week, about now being open to taxing health care benefits (except for union members, of course, since we all know who they vote for), and the "cap-and-trade" legislation which is a tax on everyone and everything in the economy.
To say nothing of the very real tax that is future interest on trillions of dollars in new deficit spending - an amount that dwarfs the combined deficit spending of the last six administrations, even during wartime. Or vote-buying pork on which the recent profits on the re-paid TARP funds from banks are about to be spent, rather tha returned to the tax payers in whose names the money was borrowed from the Chinese. Remember how He was telling us that He hoped the bank subsidies would even return a profit for the taxpayers? He forgot to mention that those profits would be redirected to highly localized district spending under the watchful eye of congressional representatives in His party, rather than being used to chip away at the deficit.
When the people who just promised you that they wouldn't do anything to cost you more money actually do so many things in eight weeks that will cost you more money - for decades to come - you don't see how that's going to impact your personal bottom line? Still, the prevailing movement to consider treating your health insurance benefits as taxable income in order to fund a trillion or so in Obamacare spending - that's the juicy one.
Re:It's not complicated. (Score:3, Insightful)
Taxing your employee health care benefits? Let's call that a
Taxing carbon use? Let's see... sure, let's call that a tax increase, too. What with it being, you know, a tax and whatnot.
Re:What if you don't fucking give a shit about cur (Score:2, Insightful)
Life is cyclical. Is it life imitating art or vice versa?
My favorite quote from Mr. Lewis Black:
"... These are the word we use to express frustration, rage, anger.... In order we don't pick up a tire iron and beat the Shit out of some one."
In a civil society, I would rather say "Godddamnn! I want to beat the F'in shit out of you," than actually do so.
Re:Well #@%$ me. (Score:2, Insightful)
In other words, if you need more effective relief. Fits the speculation perfectly.