A Good Expletive Can Reduce the Pain of a Hammered Thumb

Swearing has long been a common response to pain. Giving birth at one extreme, hitting your thumb with the hammer at the other – does it reduce the perception of pain? A study from the UK, published in the journal NeuroReport, gives the answer to this question.

The researchers wanted to investigate the extent to which swearing would alter the ability of volunteers to withstand putting their hand in icy water. Pain perception and heart rate were measured after the volunteer had repeated a swear word while putting their hand in the water, and, on another occasion, after the subject used a neutral word instead of a swear word. (The order swear word/neutral word was randomized.)

Among the 64 volunteers, swearing increased pain tolerance (allowing the hand to stay in the water longer), heart rate, and decreased subjective pain perception. Interestingly, swearing didn’t increase pain tolerance in males with a tendency to catastrophize (i.e. to make things seem much worse than they really are).

The explanation given by the researchers for this phenomenon is that swearing can increase aggression, which is linked to the fight-or-flight response: this can break the link between fear of pain and the perception of pain. It’s probable that ‘bowdlerized’ swear words, used by protective parents (e.g. “sugar” or “darn”), would be less effective, but that must be the subject of another study.