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1) In 2009, psychologists led by Richard Stephens hypothesized that swearing is often used to cope with pain and tested this with an experiment involving 60 undergraduate students. 2) The experiment involved participants submerging their hand in cold water for as long as possible while alternating between swearing and saying neutral words. Participants showed greater pain tolerance while swearing, supporting the hypothesis. 3) A follow up study by Stephens tested the effects of swearing on physical performance and the sympathetic nervous system, finding swearing improved strength, speed and the "fight or flight" response, supporting the ideas that swearing reduces pain and enhances physical ability.

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Ian Felizardo
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300 views2 pages

RRL

1) In 2009, psychologists led by Richard Stephens hypothesized that swearing is often used to cope with pain and tested this with an experiment involving 60 undergraduate students. 2) The experiment involved participants submerging their hand in cold water for as long as possible while alternating between swearing and saying neutral words. Participants showed greater pain tolerance while swearing, supporting the hypothesis. 3) A follow up study by Stephens tested the effects of swearing on physical performance and the sympathetic nervous system, finding swearing improved strength, speed and the "fight or flight" response, supporting the ideas that swearing reduces pain and enhances physical ability.

Uploaded by

Ian Felizardo
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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In 2009, a group of psychologists lead by Richard Stephens questioned the process

of swearing, and the common reasons why a person usually does so. They came up
with the hypothesis that it is oftenly used whenever a person is exposed to a large
amount of pain. From their university, they surveyed around over 60 undergraduate
participants, and arranged an experiment to prove their hypothesis, and the other
underlying factors along with it.

They used only one method to test the participants. The researchers prepared two
water containers for the experiment. The temperature of both containers varied, as
the first container only had 5 degrees Celcius while the other had 25 degrees
Celcius. They also assessed the heart rate of the paticipants using a Polar FS1
monitor, and meausured their amount of pain using various pain questionaires. The
process was to have the participants dip their non-dominant hand in the water
container that was 25 degress Celcius, for at least 3 minutes as a starting point.
After 3 minutes, the same hand would then be plunged to the other container which
was 5 degrees Celcius. The test was to have their hand dipped in cold water for as
long as they could while repeatedly saying a profane word of their choice, and a
neutral word they can switch into for comparison. The results of this experiment
favored their hypothesis, as most of their participants showed greater pain
tolerance when using profane words, compared to neutral words.

A related research was also done by another group, but still lead by Richard
Stephens. They had 2 hypotheses to test in their new research, one was to find the
effect of profanity in the performance of one’s physical activities, while the other
was to test the reaction of the body’s sypathetic nervous system, or the “fight-or-
flight” response, to profanity. Unlike their earlier research, they used two
experiments to gather data. Their first experiment was to test the strength and
speed of muscles with the use of bicycles, while their second one was through
dynamometers. Same as their earlier experiments, they let their participants choose
a profane word of their choice, and another neutral word they can use to
differentiate results. They concluded both of their tests with enough data to support
their initial hypotheses, proving that profanity helps people perform better in their
physical activities.

In both researches of the groups lead by Richard Stephens, they proved that
profanity is not only an expression used by people, but also another way to help
physical performance and reduce pain. The results of their researches were enough
to conclude that swearing helps reduce pain as it enhances the sympathetic nervous
system, causing the muscles to grow stronger and better in performing different
activities.

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