Why Swearing Is a Sign of Intelligence and Helps Manage Pain Sandee LaMotte - CNN
go to original June 17, 2023

Polite society considers swearing to be a vulgar sign of low intelligence and education, for why would one rely on rude language when blessed with a rich vocabulary?

That perception, as it turns out, is full of, uh … baloney. In fact, swearing may be a sign of verbal superiority, studies have shown, and may provide other possible rewards as well.

“The advantages of swearing are many,” said Timothy Jay, professor emeritus of psychology at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, who has studied swearing for more than 40 years.

“The benefits of swearing have just emerged in the last two decades as a result of a lot of research on brain and emotion, along with much better technology to study brain anatomy.”

Cursing May Be a Sign of Intelligence

Well-educated people with plenty of words at their disposal, a 2015 study found, were better at coming up with curse words than those who were less verbally fluent.

Participants were asked to list as many words that start with F, A or S in one minute. Another minute was devoted to coming up with curse words that start with those three letters. The study found those who came up with the most F, A and S words also produced the most swear words.

That’s a sign of intelligence “to the degree that language is correlated with intelligence,” said Jay, who authored the study. “People that are good at language are good at generating a swearing vocabulary.”

Profanity Improves Pain Tolerance

Want to push through that workout? Go ahead and drop an f-bomb.

People on bikes who swore while pedaling against resistance had more power and strength than people who used “neutral” words, studies have shown.

Research (PDF) also found that people who cursed while squeezing a hand vice were able to squeeze harder and longer.

Spouting obscenities doesn’t just help your endurance: If you pinch your finger in the car door, you may well feel less pain if you say “sh*t” instead of “shoot.”

People who cursed as they plunged their hand into icy water, another study found, felt less pain and were able to keep their hands in the water longer than those who said a neutral word.

“The headline message is that swearing helps you cope with pain,” said lead author and psychologist Richard Stephens, in an earlier CNN interview. Stephens is a senior lecturer at Keele University in Staffordshire, England, where he leads the Psychobiology Research Laboratory.

Stephens said it works like this: Cussing produces a stress response that initiates the body’s ancient defensive reflex. A flush of adrenaline increases heart rate and breathing, prepping muscles for fight or flight.

Simultaneously, there is another physiological reaction called an analgesic response, which makes the body more impervious to pain.

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