At any one time the School of Psychology at the University of Reading has between 50-70 PhD students conducting research across the disciplines of psychology and neuroscience. As a result, each June the school holds a PhD Conference in which students are required to present the work they’ve undertaken (in theory within the last year) as either a poster presentation, oral presentation, or condensed research ‘blitz’.
Investigating the swear words we say in response to pain
Chris took the opportunity to present his poster into his investigation into the likelihood of a swear word being said in response to pain and how this relates to both the offensiveness and tabooness of the word, as well as the methodological procedures used to empirically test the effect swearing on pain. This was the same poster Chris had previously presented at the Doctoral and Researcher College Conference, but rather than talking to a general audience as before, Chris spent 60-minutes speaking directly to the people sampled for the poster about the specific psychological explanations for the results.
Responses from 102 psychology students at the University of Reading were analysed to see which swear words were most likely to be vocalised in response to pain. The results showed that fuck and shit were significantly more likely to said as a response to pain than the third placed word, damn, or any of the other 80 swear words the students had rated. Interestingly, how personally offensive or socially taboo the students thought a word was didn’t relate to how likely they were to say that word when in pain. This means that the choice of swear word uttered in painful moments is unlikely to depend on how taboo, or offensive the word is perceived to be. Something else seems to be driving our word choice.
The results were then considered alongside earlier studies that had shown that saying a swear word out loud could help people tolerate pain (e.g. Stephens et al., 2009). This connection is important because it potentially challenges the suggestion that any swear word could prove beneficial. If only certain words, like fuck and shit, actually help people tolerate pain, then it might not be “swearing” in general that has the effect, but particular words that carry the right emotional punch.
The study is still ongoing if you’d like to take part, click here.