3 ms·
Profanity Helps One Tolerate Physical Pain Better
- onreact-com 17y agoThat explains hard core hip hop.
- viggity 17y agoSo when I sing along, I'm really just dulling the pain that such music exists.
- scott_s 17y agoIronically swearing when talking about swearing falls flat, always.
- gjm11 17y agoThe note at the start says "This is an exact transcript of this podcast". The actual content is full of "@$#%!" and suchlike. So does the speaker in the podcast say things like "Holy at-sign dollar hash percent exclamation mark"? An article about the same research at the researcher's university -- http://keeleuniversitypressoffice.wordpress.com/2009/07/13/swearing/ http://keeleuniversitypressoffice.wordpress.com/2009/07/13/s... -- is more specific about what sorts of word the subjects were allowed to use in the two conditions. It wasn't that they were "only allowed to use more socially acceptable words" in the no-swearing condition; more specifically, they were asked to use "a more commonplace word that they would use to describe a table". The abstract of the paper says "a neutral word". So, in particular, it isn't that subjects were having to expend mental energy thinking up socially acceptable expletives :-).
- chaosmachine 17y agoSo does the speaker in the podcast say things like "Holy at-sign dollar hash percent exclamation mark"? They use a bunch of "funny bleeping sounds" in the podcast.
- calcnerd256 17y agofrom http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=why-do-we-swear http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=why-do-we-s... "There is a catch, though: The more we swear, the less emotionally potent the words become, Stephens cautions. And without emotion, all that is left of a swearword is the word itself, unlikely to soothe anyone's pain."
- benatkin 17y agoThat's exactly what I thought of when I read the headline.
- TheSOB88 17y agoSeems more of a "I want to do this thing, therefore if I do it, I'll feel slightly better" sort of thing. I mean, people get accustomed to cussing. I sure feel better when I get the urge to do it and can actually do it.
- frankus 17y agoSounds like a nomination for an Ig Nobel is in order.