and one I actually like!
Swearing Makes Pain More Tolerable
That muttered curse word that reflexively comes out when you stub your toe could actually make it easier to bear the throbbing pain, a new study suggests.
Swearing is a common response to pain, but no previous research has connected the uttering of an expletive to the actual physical experience of pain.
(….)
Stephens and his fellow Keele researchers John Atkins and Andrew Kingston sought to test how swearing would affect an individual’s tolerance to pain. Because swearing often has an exaggerating effect that can overstate the severity of pain, the team thought that swearing would lessen a person’s tolerance.
As it turned out, the opposite seems to be true.
(….)
The researchers think that the increase in pain tolerance occurs because swearing triggers the body’s natural “fight-or-flight” response….
(source)
So I’m wondering if it can be any “swear” word or must it be an actual “dirty” word. Would repeating “dagnabbit” work as well as repeating “goddammit”? Would “fudge” work as good as “fuck”? I would assume it would be the emotion behind the word so yes, the prettified words would work as well IF that emotion was behind it.
There are several flaws I see in the research, and perhaps it is further discussed in the actual paper. The subjects stuck their hands in cold water and repeated a cuss word. Then they stuck their other hand in cold water and said the non-cuss word. So did they tolerate the cold less the second time because their tolerance was already down? Was there time between the two? When they said the non-cuss word, they used “a more common word that they would use to describe a table”. The same word with any emotion behind it? If I said “flat” with as much emphasis as I would “fuck”, which direction would it go?
For me, “Fuck” will always be more powerful then “Fudge”. Though, I think you’re right, that it’s more about the emotion then the word itself. But maybe they’ll do more of an in depth study and both of our curiosities will be satisfied.
Announcement: You have used up your allotted daily amount of optimism. Things are not looking up.
Fuck.
Yes, it has to be the baggage. Like, “gosh darnit” may be what we grew up saying, but “god dammit” carries a lot more weight in our brains because of the perceived badness of it.
Sandi Patti, a contemporary gospel singer, was a regular guest of Johnny Carson’s. He once asked her if she swore/cussed. She said no. He said “So you are hammering a nail to hang up a photo and you hit your thumb. What do you say?” She grabbed her hand and yelled out her husband’s name. So would that help her tolerate the pain just as saying “shit” would?
I just told Lorna that I plan on cussing more to help me with my pain levels. She laughed and thanked me for the warning.