7 ms·

Study finds links between swearing and honesty

51 points by richardboegli 10y ago

richardboegli 10y ago
Link to paper: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1948550616681055 http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/194855061668105...
mhurron 10y ago
Interestingly, swearing is discouraged here and in business in general.
- kornish 10y ago
  By "here" you mean the US?
  - pcl 10y ago
    I read it to mean "on HN".
    - mhurron 10y ago
      Yes, I meant on HN. It's 'unprofessional.' Of course, so is honesty.
- notpc 10y ago
  When meeting with clients or other teams in a big organization, it's obviously discouraged. When speaking with colleagues, it's discouraged only when there's people who are trigger-happy about complaining to HR. Fairly or not, women in particular have a reputation of running to HR when someone says something offensive or crude, which leads to them being excluded from office banter, which leads to them feeling left out of the group. Tough problem to solve. It makes sense really. You let the profanity flow when you feel that you can trust people. You're also most honest when you feel that you can trust people.
  - cmdrfred 10y ago
    If I have to consider what I'm saying. Then I'm considering what I'm saying and I have a opportunity to spin it or outright lie. Straight off the cuff I can speak faster but don't have that chance.
    - carlmcqueen 10y ago
      I was raised in a home that didn't allow any swearing, swearing just really isn't in my active vocabulary. I totally swear when I stub my toe, when I forget something and I'm half way to work, but I never feel need the need to interject swears into common sentences. People comment that I don't swear often -- usually uncomfortably checking if I'm against it-- I'm not, I work in finance where there is a lot of swearing done and don't mind. Its just not part of the vocab I use. Interesting twist for me is that now that the kids are all grown up my mother swears and said she swore a lot before kids but 'gave it up' to make the rule real. Totally hard for my brain to handle.
  - edgarvaldes 10y ago
    It reminds me of the famous article by Joel Spolsky about his first Bill Gates review [1] >In my BillG review meeting, the whole reporting hierarchy was there, along with their cousins, sisters, and aunts, and a person who came along from my team whose whole job during the meeting was to keep an accurate count of how many times Bill said the F word. The lower the f*-count, the better. Was Gates the only one allowed to swear? [1] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/06/16/my-first-billg-review/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/06/16/my-first-billg-rev...
    - notpc 10y ago
      God bless Bill. I've also heard great stories of chairs being thrown (not at people, of course) in high-level Microsoft meetings. Can you imagine him getting away with it today though? Someone would have tried to sue him for creating a "hostile workplace" or something like that. We're getting too soft these days.
  - moon_priestess 10y ago
- ar15saveslives 10y ago
  Anything that differs from uniform grey goo is discouraged in business.
- roflc0ptic 10y ago
  Straight honesty isn't always a virtue. Plus cussing signals lots of other things, too. I cuss a lot at work. But I don't cuss at people. I have a coworker that says things like "It's fucking ridiculous that X task isn't done" to the people who are doing that task. This dude is toxic to be around. I... think I'm not? We'll see how many of the people I'm managing still work here in a year, though. Hopefully all of them. So yeah. In addition to signaling honesty, cussing can be part of aggressively damaging relationships, which is something businesses (and HN) benefit from discouraging.
  - nastygibbon 10y ago
    > Straight honesty isn't always a virtue. I find this an interesting statement. Would you mind providing some clear examples of a real-life situation where honesty isn't a virtue? I often find that lying is convenient (for the person lying) in the short term but its damage can be far reaching and difficult to predict. If you want to have meaningful and effective relationships (at home or at work) straight honesty is always beneficial. I do remember working with someone who had Alzheimer's disease. I stopped being honest with her quite quickly as I figured that repeatedly reminding her of her husband's death was wrong. But I can't think of any other examples of my life when straight honesty wasn't a virtue. What about you?
    - scrollaway 10y ago
      > Would you mind providing some clear examples of a real-life situation where honesty isn't a virtue? In most negotiations, you are usually at an advantage if you have more information than other parties. Lying/lack of transparency tend to work to your advantage in such situations. Of course, it depends on what, and there's context to that...
    - olkid 10y ago
      Years ago... I managed a 1MM retail shop in San Francisco; worked too many hours. Needed that "mental health" day off. I informed my regional manager. Within the hour, he called me back and said "next time, just lie to me. tell me your sick". I'm not entirely sure what transpired. I assume he had to report to higher-ups(and it didn't go over well?). But, that experience has always stuck with me. In general, I am honest & don't swear much.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- Quarrelsome 10y ago
  The endless march of American Corporate Culture. I've watched every single one of my submissions to Stackoverflow that I contributed in my own free time slowly cleaned and all my character purged from it until it more or less sounds like an American infomercial. And when I complain about this American cultural belligerence all I get is a bunch of blithe, hollow muppets who have been drained of passion and love telling me that I'm unprofessional and not swearing is empirically better because. Fuck that shit. I have to pragmatically accept it as a fact of life but I _really_ despise it.
  - hnhg 10y ago
    Controlling swearing is also part of British culture so it's unfair to lay the blame on Americans.
    - Quarrelsome 10y ago
      in the 70's perhaps. Not so much anymore and definitely much less so in the workplace. The: > thou shalt not swear on the internet programming community is really coloured by corporate and most corporate is American. The big argument I get is about corporate firewalls preventing access to any StackOverflow page with a cuss in it.
    - simonswords82 10y ago
      No not at all. I'm sorry but British TV and society in general are infinitely more open to swear words than the same in America.
    - jaclaz 10y ago
      There is a line somewhere between being "colourful" (and using some "bad words" when they are really needed) which may be "unpolite" or "inappropriate" according to the British and being NOT "politically correct" according to the Americans. The first can easily be "fixed" for the more sensitive audience by using synonyms or some asterisk/hyphen substitution, or more generally toning it down a bit, and is - if I am allowed to use the two words together - substantially formal only. The second is instead IMHO a bigger issue, because it implies a form of (self or coming from the society) imposed censorship on the "concepts". The Americans that have in theory the most permissive (thanks to first amendment) Laws on the right of expressing one's opinion have seemingly in practice a lot more "forbidden" topics (in the sense of topics on which your opinion "must" conform to the society accepted take on the matter). At least this is my impression.
- psyc 10y ago
  I personally haven't found it particularly discouraged in business. But it is really, really discouraged in church.
simonswords82 10y ago
I swear...actually I swear an awful lot. Sometimes I say fuck, shit and bollocks all in one sentence. It's a big part of my vocabulary. I find it bizarre that there are certain sounds that I can make with my mouth that ripple through the air and upon hitting the delicate ears of another human being will cause offence. I think people of the future will look back on this period of time and refer to all of us as crazy for being so sensitive when there are much, much bigger problems facing humankind. I find it even crazier still that people write f-ck or c-cksucker and feel that by using hyphen they're protecting these same sensitive folk from the rudeness of the words. I mean come on. If I read f*ck what I actually say in my head is "fuck". Not "beep" or some other auto-censor in my head. Just two minor caveats to all of the above: If I'm meeting somebody new, or somebody with whom I do not already have a close relationship with (especially within the confines of business) I will tone down but not cease my swearing. It's just polite but if they then proceed to drop an f-bomb all bets are off and I'll revert to default swearing mode. I also do not swear, for obvious reasons, in front of my three year old or any children for that matter. Again, it's just common sense.
- nastygibbon 10y ago
  > I also do not swear, for obvious reasons, in front of my three year old or any children for that matter. Again, it's just common sense. Why is this obvious (I'm not being facetious)?
  - imesh 10y ago
    Because although I'm fine with swearing everyone else judges me harshly when my 3 year old says 'fuck'
  - simonswords82 10y ago
    See the other answer. And also imagine I swear in front of a kid and he goes home and says the word I used to his Mum or worse still perhaps to a school teacher. The Mum/teacher/whatever is potentially going to chastise the kid for using the word that I gave him but bless him, he doesn't know any better and just enjoyed making the sound. It seems most unfair that I should place the kid in such a predicament given he doesn't understand the wider context of language and where swearing fits within language and perhaps society.
codeddesign 10y ago
And tomorrow someone will find links between depression and happiness. There are 10's of thousands of studies published a year, in which case most are completely unfounded or ridiculous. With the right test group, right questions, and correctly controlled environment, you can create almost any conclusion. "Scientific Studies: John Oliver" : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Rnq1NpHdmw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Rnq1NpHdmw "Stanford News - research Scientists and Data": http://news.stanford.edu/2015/11/16/fraud-science-papers-111615/ http://news.stanford.edu/2015/11/16/fraud-science-papers-111... "TWP - 64 Scientific Papers Restracted": https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/08/18/outbreak-of-fake-peer-reviews-widens-as-major-publisher-retracts-64-scientific-papers/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/08/1...
- dang 10y ago
  Maybe so, but please don't post generic dismissals to HN. It takes discussion in predictable directions, which is not interesting. Better comments find something specific to engage with.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
jawns 10y ago
I read through the study about which this article reports. The first two experiments are not very robust. They present a _plausible_ association between cursing and honesty, but it's not especially convincing. There is so much potential for confounding variables and sampling defects (e.g. self-reported data from Mechanical Turk users, a group who may not represent the population at large) that you could drive a truck through it. There are likely many other plausible explanations for the results that don't actually depend on an association between cursing and honesty. For instance, in the first experiment, participants were asked question such as "Are all your habits good and desirable ones?" If they answered, "Yes," it was considered a lie. But it might alternatively indicate several other things, such as poor reading comprehension, paranoia about how the answers might be used, poor self-inventory skills, etc. As for the third state-level experiment, it's just silly. It's the sort of thing you might see on Buzzfeed or my own site, Correlated.org. Don't take it seriously.
tabeth 10y ago
Personally, I've found the following heuristic to be very accurate: if you wouldn't do it in front of a toddler AND allow them do it themselves, then you probably shouldn't do it, ever. There's likely no value in doing it (I intentionally say likely and don't claim an absolute. There are exceptions, e.g. having sex). 1. Drinking 2. Smoking 3. Drugs 4. Stealing 5. Cheating 6. Cursing (needless to say, it's a long list).
- Quarrelsome 10y ago
  > then you probably shouldn't do it, ever. You must be fun at parties. That's a great means of clean living but as a rule for everyone to follow I think its a touch strict. Also our culture has some curious ideas about children and what about the world to shield them from. The dastardly lie of Santa and the general premise that innocence should be preserved instead of teaching them the truth of the world is one clear example of our strange interactions with our progeny. Often concerns about swearing especially are very redundant around children and arguably selfish. One doesn't swear around children because they might use the word with frequency and embarrass the parent not because there is any detriment in the child being exposed to swearing.
  - tabeth 10y ago
    Can you explain this "you must be fun at parties" comment I see often? And I am very fun at parties. I fail to see what cursing, drinking, smoking, etc has to do with being a fun person.
    - Quarrelsome 10y ago
      The youthful idea is that parties are to be debauched to an extent. So being strictly straight laced makes people less comfortable about being debauched. Ultimately though it comes down to your post: > then you probably shouldn't do it, ever. assuming (somewhat, not much but a little, the "personally" at the start saves it) that people should be like you. Conversely I feel that everyone should be everything they want to be. Drunk, smoked, high, clean, religious, atheist, etc. There is no "better" because there is no one objective context, there is just different and many.
LarryMade2 10y ago
I think this is a bit of spin being put out to make the next president's profanity seem like a good thing. Reminds me in a way of "the Emperor's New Clothes"...
nrjdhsbsid 10y ago
This was posted fucking yesterday
sctb 10y ago
Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13412107 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13412107
anotherevan 10y ago
“If the guy next to you is swearing like a wharfie he’s probably a billionaire. Or, just conceivably, a wharfie.” — Australian observation

51 points by richardboegli 10y ago

Link to paper: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1948550616681055 http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/194855061668105...

mhurron 10y ago

Interestingly, swearing is discouraged here and in business in general.

kornish 10y ago
By "here" you mean the US?
- pcl 10y ago
  I read it to mean "on HN".
  - mhurron 10y ago
    Yes, I meant on HN. It's 'unprofessional.' Of course, so is honesty.
notpc 10y ago
When meeting with clients or other teams in a big organization, it's obviously discouraged. When speaking with colleagues, it's discouraged only when there's people who are trigger-happy about complaining to HR. Fairly or not, women in particular have a reputation of running to HR when someone says something offensive or crude, which leads to them being excluded from office banter, which leads to them feeling left out of the group. Tough problem to solve. It makes sense really. You let the profanity flow when you feel that you can trust people. You're also most honest when you feel that you can trust people.
- cmdrfred 10y ago
  If I have to consider what I'm saying. Then I'm considering what I'm saying and I have a opportunity to spin it or outright lie. Straight off the cuff I can speak faster but don't have that chance.
  - carlmcqueen 10y ago
    I was raised in a home that didn't allow any swearing, swearing just really isn't in my active vocabulary. I totally swear when I stub my toe, when I forget something and I'm half way to work, but I never feel need the need to interject swears into common sentences. People comment that I don't swear often -- usually uncomfortably checking if I'm against it-- I'm not, I work in finance where there is a lot of swearing done and don't mind. Its just not part of the vocab I use. Interesting twist for me is that now that the kids are all grown up my mother swears and said she swore a lot before kids but 'gave it up' to make the rule real. Totally hard for my brain to handle.
- edgarvaldes 10y ago
  It reminds me of the famous article by Joel Spolsky about his first Bill Gates review [1] >In my BillG review meeting, the whole reporting hierarchy was there, along with their cousins, sisters, and aunts, and a person who came along from my team whose whole job during the meeting was to keep an accurate count of how many times Bill said the F word. The lower the f*-count, the better. Was Gates the only one allowed to swear? [1] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/06/16/my-first-billg-review/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/06/16/my-first-billg-rev...
  - notpc 10y ago
    God bless Bill. I've also heard great stories of chairs being thrown (not at people, of course) in high-level Microsoft meetings. Can you imagine him getting away with it today though? Someone would have tried to sue him for creating a "hostile workplace" or something like that. We're getting too soft these days.
- moon_priestess 10y ago
ar15saveslives 10y ago
Anything that differs from uniform grey goo is discouraged in business.
roflc0ptic 10y ago
Straight honesty isn't always a virtue. Plus cussing signals lots of other things, too. I cuss a lot at work. But I don't cuss at people. I have a coworker that says things like "It's fucking ridiculous that X task isn't done" to the people who are doing that task. This dude is toxic to be around. I... think I'm not? We'll see how many of the people I'm managing still work here in a year, though. Hopefully all of them. So yeah. In addition to signaling honesty, cussing can be part of aggressively damaging relationships, which is something businesses (and HN) benefit from discouraging.
- nastygibbon 10y ago
  > Straight honesty isn't always a virtue. I find this an interesting statement. Would you mind providing some clear examples of a real-life situation where honesty isn't a virtue? I often find that lying is convenient (for the person lying) in the short term but its damage can be far reaching and difficult to predict. If you want to have meaningful and effective relationships (at home or at work) straight honesty is always beneficial. I do remember working with someone who had Alzheimer's disease. I stopped being honest with her quite quickly as I figured that repeatedly reminding her of her husband's death was wrong. But I can't think of any other examples of my life when straight honesty wasn't a virtue. What about you?
  - scrollaway 10y ago
    > Would you mind providing some clear examples of a real-life situation where honesty isn't a virtue? In most negotiations, you are usually at an advantage if you have more information than other parties. Lying/lack of transparency tend to work to your advantage in such situations. Of course, it depends on what, and there's context to that...
  - olkid 10y ago
    Years ago... I managed a 1MM retail shop in San Francisco; worked too many hours. Needed that "mental health" day off. I informed my regional manager. Within the hour, he called me back and said "next time, just lie to me. tell me your sick". I'm not entirely sure what transpired. I assume he had to report to higher-ups(and it didn't go over well?). But, that experience has always stuck with me. In general, I am honest & don't swear much.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
Quarrelsome 10y ago
The endless march of American Corporate Culture. I've watched every single one of my submissions to Stackoverflow that I contributed in my own free time slowly cleaned and all my character purged from it until it more or less sounds like an American infomercial. And when I complain about this American cultural belligerence all I get is a bunch of blithe, hollow muppets who have been drained of passion and love telling me that I'm unprofessional and not swearing is empirically better because. Fuck that shit. I have to pragmatically accept it as a fact of life but I _really_ despise it.
- hnhg 10y ago
  Controlling swearing is also part of British culture so it's unfair to lay the blame on Americans.
  - Quarrelsome 10y ago
    in the 70's perhaps. Not so much anymore and definitely much less so in the workplace. The: > thou shalt not swear on the internet programming community is really coloured by corporate and most corporate is American. The big argument I get is about corporate firewalls preventing access to any StackOverflow page with a cuss in it.
  - simonswords82 10y ago
    No not at all. I'm sorry but British TV and society in general are infinitely more open to swear words than the same in America.
  - jaclaz 10y ago
    There is a line somewhere between being "colourful" (and using some "bad words" when they are really needed) which may be "unpolite" or "inappropriate" according to the British and being NOT "politically correct" according to the Americans. The first can easily be "fixed" for the more sensitive audience by using synonyms or some asterisk/hyphen substitution, or more generally toning it down a bit, and is - if I am allowed to use the two words together - substantially formal only. The second is instead IMHO a bigger issue, because it implies a form of (self or coming from the society) imposed censorship on the "concepts". The Americans that have in theory the most permissive (thanks to first amendment) Laws on the right of expressing one's opinion have seemingly in practice a lot more "forbidden" topics (in the sense of topics on which your opinion "must" conform to the society accepted take on the matter). At least this is my impression.
psyc 10y ago
I personally haven't found it particularly discouraged in business. But it is really, really discouraged in church.

simonswords82 10y ago

I swear...actually I swear an awful lot. Sometimes I say fuck, shit and bollocks all in one sentence. It's a big part of my vocabulary. I find it bizarre that there are certain sounds that I can make with my mouth that ripple through the air and upon hitting the delicate ears of another human being will cause offence. I think people of the future will look back on this period of time and refer to all of us as crazy for being so sensitive when there are much, much bigger problems facing humankind. I find it even crazier still that people write f-ck or c-cksucker and feel that by using hyphen they're protecting these same sensitive folk from the rudeness of the words. I mean come on. If I read f*ck what I actually say in my head is "fuck". Not "beep" or some other auto-censor in my head. Just two minor caveats to all of the above: If I'm meeting somebody new, or somebody with whom I do not already have a close relationship with (especially within the confines of business) I will tone down but not cease my swearing. It's just polite but if they then proceed to drop an f-bomb all bets are off and I'll revert to default swearing mode. I also do not swear, for obvious reasons, in front of my three year old or any children for that matter. Again, it's just common sense.

nastygibbon 10y ago
> I also do not swear, for obvious reasons, in front of my three year old or any children for that matter. Again, it's just common sense. Why is this obvious (I'm not being facetious)?
- imesh 10y ago
  Because although I'm fine with swearing everyone else judges me harshly when my 3 year old says 'fuck'
- simonswords82 10y ago
  See the other answer. And also imagine I swear in front of a kid and he goes home and says the word I used to his Mum or worse still perhaps to a school teacher. The Mum/teacher/whatever is potentially going to chastise the kid for using the word that I gave him but bless him, he doesn't know any better and just enjoyed making the sound. It seems most unfair that I should place the kid in such a predicament given he doesn't understand the wider context of language and where swearing fits within language and perhaps society.

codeddesign 10y ago

And tomorrow someone will find links between depression and happiness. There are 10's of thousands of studies published a year, in which case most are completely unfounded or ridiculous. With the right test group, right questions, and correctly controlled environment, you can create almost any conclusion. "Scientific Studies: John Oliver" : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Rnq1NpHdmw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Rnq1NpHdmw "Stanford News - research Scientists and Data": http://news.stanford.edu/2015/11/16/fraud-science-papers-111615/ http://news.stanford.edu/2015/11/16/fraud-science-papers-111... "TWP - 64 Scientific Papers Restracted": https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/08/18/outbreak-of-fake-peer-reviews-widens-as-major-publisher-retracts-64-scientific-papers/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/08/1...

dang 10y ago
Maybe so, but please don't post generic dismissals to HN. It takes discussion in predictable directions, which is not interesting. Better comments find something specific to engage with.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

jawns 10y ago

I read through the study about which this article reports. The first two experiments are not very robust. They present a _plausible_ association between cursing and honesty, but it's not especially convincing. There is so much potential for confounding variables and sampling defects (e.g. self-reported data from Mechanical Turk users, a group who may not represent the population at large) that you could drive a truck through it. There are likely many other plausible explanations for the results that don't actually depend on an association between cursing and honesty. For instance, in the first experiment, participants were asked question such as "Are all your habits good and desirable ones?" If they answered, "Yes," it was considered a lie. But it might alternatively indicate several other things, such as poor reading comprehension, paranoia about how the answers might be used, poor self-inventory skills, etc. As for the third state-level experiment, it's just silly. It's the sort of thing you might see on Buzzfeed or my own site, Correlated.org. Don't take it seriously.

tabeth 10y ago

Personally, I've found the following heuristic to be very accurate: if you wouldn't do it in front of a toddler AND allow them do it themselves, then you probably shouldn't do it, ever. There's likely no value in doing it (I intentionally say likely and don't claim an absolute. There are exceptions, e.g. having sex). 1. Drinking 2. Smoking 3. Drugs 4. Stealing 5. Cheating 6. Cursing (needless to say, it's a long list).

Quarrelsome 10y ago
> then you probably shouldn't do it, ever. You must be fun at parties. That's a great means of clean living but as a rule for everyone to follow I think its a touch strict. Also our culture has some curious ideas about children and what about the world to shield them from. The dastardly lie of Santa and the general premise that innocence should be preserved instead of teaching them the truth of the world is one clear example of our strange interactions with our progeny. Often concerns about swearing especially are very redundant around children and arguably selfish. One doesn't swear around children because they might use the word with frequency and embarrass the parent not because there is any detriment in the child being exposed to swearing.
- tabeth 10y ago
  Can you explain this "you must be fun at parties" comment I see often? And I am very fun at parties. I fail to see what cursing, drinking, smoking, etc has to do with being a fun person.
  - Quarrelsome 10y ago
    The youthful idea is that parties are to be debauched to an extent. So being strictly straight laced makes people less comfortable about being debauched. Ultimately though it comes down to your post: > then you probably shouldn't do it, ever. assuming (somewhat, not much but a little, the "personally" at the start saves it) that people should be like you. Conversely I feel that everyone should be everything they want to be. Drunk, smoked, high, clean, religious, atheist, etc. There is no "better" because there is no one objective context, there is just different and many.

LarryMade2 10y ago

I think this is a bit of spin being put out to make the next president's profanity seem like a good thing. Reminds me in a way of "the Emperor's New Clothes"...

nrjdhsbsid 10y ago

This was posted fucking yesterday

sctb 10y ago

Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13412107 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13412107

anotherevan 10y ago

“If the guy next to you is swearing like a wharfie he’s probably a billionaire. Or, just conceivably, a wharfie.” — Australian observation