The Science of Swearing: Can Cursing Actually Help You?

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In this Wildly Curious minisode, Katy Reiss and Laura Fawks Lapole kick off their new Niche Scientists series with a deep dive into Dr. Richard Stephens—a psychologist who studies something we all do (sometimes loudly): swearing.

From pain tolerance to powerlifting, Dr. Stephens’ research shows that strategic cursing can actually make you stronger, tougher, and maybe even a little bit smarter about when to drop an F-bomb.

🤬 Can swearing really reduce pain?
 💪 Does cursing make you physically stronger?
 🧠 What happens in your brain when you let it fly?
 🚫 And why swearing too often makes it less effective?

It’s the perfect mix of science, psychology, and sass—because sometimes the best way to say “ouch”... is to not say “ouch.”

🎧 This is our first episodr of our Niche Scientists minisodes—short, weird, and full of science you didn’t know you needed.

Transcript

katy: [00:00:00] All right guys. Well, just like we've done every other season or, uh, last several seasons at least we've done a long episode, which is what was last week, and then we've broken up the long episodes for mine and Laura Sanity and the mini episodes. All right? So it helps us with the time and it helps us be able to put more content and effort into the long episodes since we're both full-time mom, full-time working, and full-time in this.

So to help us, we are talking in season 13, this mini episode series, we're gonna be talking about extremely niche scientists and how there are scientists who specialize in absolute weirdest subjects and study some of the most bizarre topics.

laura: Yeah, I'm, we're really excited about who we found because I, I love talking about like, you know, misunderstood animals or like underappreciated animals. These are the underappreciated scientists.

katy: do you wanna go first? 

laura: Sure.

So my first?

person, , I wanted to also spread out [00:01:00] my niche scientists between different areas of science. , So it's gonna cover a wide range here. Up first is Dr. Richard 

Stevens, who looks at swearing

and I was like, how appropriate I am about to go into labor probably any day now, and I need some help in pain

reduction and 

katy: Or any minute, really.

laura: Yeah, yeah, truly.

katy: Yeah. Right.

laura: So Dr. Stevens is a

senior lecturer of psychology at Keel University in the United Kingdom. He has, about 30 years of experience, or a little over 30 years of experience in psychology, and he has developed an international reputation for research, on emotional language, specifically swearing.

So basically what are the psychological benefits of swearing? And I was like, okay, I'm in, I'm invested. Let's see what it says. Not that I like swear a lot, but I swear strategically. , So like I get a lot of umph when I do it. In June of 2015, he, [00:02:00] published a book called Black Sheep, the Hidden Benefits of Being Bad. So you feel free to read his book. And he's a huge proponent of science

communication with his research. He has talked about this everywhere. And he really feels like communication, which makes sense. That's what he's kind of studying is communication and psychology and stuff. How important that is. So I just wanted to read you a

couple of his paper titles because they're just hilarious and it gives you the idea of what he does. So let's

see. Using expletives to enhance therapeutic outcomes, a case report. Effective swearing on strength.

Frankly, we do give a damn improving patient outcomes with swearing.

Swearing is a response to pain taboo. Gesticulations is a response to pain. Does emotional

arousal influence swearing, fluency, and just swearing the language of life and

death? So like a lot of just cool stuff, 

katy: Yeah. How many different [00:03:00] ways can I Yeah. Yeah. 'cause it's, it is from different angles or like with twists. So probably his most famous

laura: study.

He, and, and 

to be fair, all of these researchers that we're talking about today, probably in yours included, nobody is a lone wolf owl here. Right? Like, all these papers and all these studies include multiple

people. So I'm 

not trying to like just wash over everybody else's contribution. It's just his thing. 

katy: We're not, we're not blanketing out the ET alls here. It's gonna be just happens to be the primary researcher on 

laura: Right. So his, like their first foray into this was swearing and pain tolerance. So here's the study. The participants had to dip their hand in freezing water. They did this on their college students in their classes. They signed 

katy: Of course they did. 

laura: Yeah. So they had to

dip their 

hand in freezing water until they could

no longer do so like it became painful.

The water was so cold, they could then use a control word, which they asked. Okay. Give me a word to describe a table. So like brown, [00:04:00] like that's a control word versus one of their top five swear words.

After the hand was removed, the researchers looked at their pain perception, like what they perceived pain as, and their heart rate.

So like the physical and the emotional. 

katy: Yeah. 

laura: The results show that the patients could withstand the pain for longer by repeating a swear word and it lowered pain perception. And, while increasing heart rate. So like your heart might've sped up, but in general you could tolerate the pain for longer.

So they came to the conclusion that, , it's called

hyperalgesic effect is pain lowering may occur because swearing induces a fight or flight response and

nullifies the link between fear of pain and pain perception. So you're swearing your brain is thinking like this is an emergency. I'm using a radical word here, right? So as soon as you do, your

brain is , this is an emergency fight or flight kicks in and then fight or flight reduces [00:05:00] pain in general, like

you can do crazy things. When that has started,

katy: yeah. 

laura: he's also looked at the use of traditional versus new swear

words in response to pain.

katy: Swear words versus 

laura: made up, which is I'm constantly feeling like I'm 

using made up ones because of like having 

to use 

katy: Oh, made up ones. 

Oh, I'm all the time. Yeah. 

laura: son of a nutcracker. Yeah. Yeah.

katy: Yeah. 

laura: So participants used four words, fuck, ouch, and twist pipe and a neutral word. Okay. Uch, ouch. And 

twist 

katy: So wait, the, so he had, so wait, he had all the researcher, all the kids 

with they couldn't pick those swear 

laura: right? those were 

the four words

They had to use. One was a real swear word. Two were made up and one was a

control, like a neutral word in response to pain. Probably just like hour or something. 

katy: Okay. 

laura: Ouch. And twist pipe

did have emotional and humor responses. Like of course you'd laugh saying something like that, like I do with some words,[00:06:00] 

but.

Did not help with pain, pain, threshold tolerance

only. Fuck did, and it increased pain 

tolerance by 

katy: I mean, 

laura: That's a

lot. 

katy: Hmm. 

It is a lot. But I wonder too, I wonder too, if he let them pick their own made up words,

laura: it would break 

how 

katy: you know what I mean? Like, would that help? Because then it's your, your own brain's perception of 

what 

laura: they did 

katy: quote unquote swear 

laura: they were allowed to choose one of their five 

favorites. But I don't know if they 

came up with a pain

threshold number in that one.

But although it's really

awesome that this is in effect, and I'm certainly going to use this to my advantage during labor and, 

katy: Right? 

laura: can become habituate.

This is, this is like

any behavior. You can become habituated. So they found in another study that the more, more

regularly you swear in everyday life, the less of an effect this has overall. Because your brain is just

used to it, you're no longer thrown into fight or flight. And then lastly, 

katy: Yeah. [00:07:00] It's just a normal 

laura: yeah, right, yeah, it doesn't do anything for you anymore. Lastly, another interesting one they did was looking at swearing and its effect on strength and power performance. Does swearing make you physically stronger? Like when you're at the

gym, I'm like, Ugh. You know, like I just,

katy: Yeah.

laura: when people, when you just drop an F-bomb while you're

lifting a ox. So participants had to do anaerobic and

isometric exercises while either swearing or using a neutral word. The participants did have greater performance while swearing. But unlike in the pain one, it did not affect heart rate, blood pressure, or what's called skin conductance. So they don't know why. Like it didn't, it's not a fight or flight.

Is it just purely psychological, like you can just

power through it 

katy: Yeah.

laura: physical,

katy: Interesting. 

laura: So, uh, if you start just

drop, just start swearing while you're power lifting, you can do 

more. 

katy: [00:08:00] apparently it works. 

Yeah, 

it works. We just don't know 

why, 

laura: Yeah, it's fascinating. So swearing not always appropriate in all contexts, but helpful 

in some 

katy: yeah. But it works. All right, that was a good one. So that's our first mini episode. Like we said, next week we'll have another regular length episode, and then week after that we'll be back with another niche scientist and then so on and so forth for the rest of season 13, guys. So go check us out on Patreon, follow us on social media, wildly Curious podcast, and we will talk to you next 

laura: Bye.