Swearing as a Response to Pain: Assessing Effects of Novel Swear Words

Summary

Introduction Swearing, defined as the use of taboo language conveying connotative information (Jay and Janschewitz, 2008), is a near-universal feature of language (van Lancker and Cummings, 1999). Research has shown that repeating a swear word can be an effective way of increasing tolerance for the physical pain of an ice water challenge (Stephens et al., 2009; Stephens and Umland, 2011; Robertson et al., 2017) and the social pain associated with ostracism (Philipp and Lombardo, 2017). In explaining how swearing brings about these pain reducing effects, one theory posits that swearing brings about a stress-induced analgesia (Stephens and Umland, 2011; Philipp and Lombardo, 2017) via increased autonomic arousal. Consistent with this theory, several studies have shown that swearing provokes an autonomic response, assessed via increased heart rate (Stephens et al., 2009; Stephens and Umland, 2011) and increased skin conductance (LaBar and Phelps, 1998; Jay et al., 2008; Bowers and Pleydell-Pearce, 2011). It is the emotion-provoking aspect of swearing that is thought to underlie this increase in autonomic arousal (Stephens and Allsop, 2012). It would be of theoretical interest to further assess the importance of emotional arousal as a means by which swearing brings about pain relief. A novel way to assess this would be to test whether a newly made-up “swear” word, chosen because it has potential to elicit an emotional response, produces similar pain reducing effects as swearing. An alternative theory explaining how swearing brings about pain reducing effects is via attention modulation (Wiech et al., 2008). It is established within the framework of the descending pain inhibitory system that cognitive processes, including distracting attention away from a pain stimulus, can reduce perceived pain (Edwards et al., 2009). The precise mechanism appears to be a combination of inhibiting sensory and emotional brain regions, while at the same time acting in an excitatory capaci...