Dropping an F-bomb can boost your performance by helping you feel stronger, more focused, and disinhibited, say scientists.
Most who curse like a sailor know that letting out a swear word in a moment of frustration can feel good.
Now, new research by psychologists suggests that it really can be good for your well-being.
The study, published in the journal American Psychologist, shows that swearing can boost people’s physical performance by helping them overcome their inhibitions and pushing themselves harder in strength and endurance tests.
“In many situations, people hold themselves back—consciously or unconsciously—from using their full strength,” said study author Dr. Richard Stephens, of Keele University in Staffordshire, England.
“Swearing is an easily available way to help yourself feel focused, confident and less distracted, and ‘go for it’ a little more.”
Previous research by Dr. Stephens and his colleagues found that when people swear, they perform better on many physical challenges—including how long they can keep their hand in ice water and how long they can support their bodyweight during a chair push-up exercise.
“That is now a well-replicated, reliable finding,” said Stephens. “But the question is, how is swearing helping us? What’s the psychological mechanism?”
Dr. Stephens and his colleagues believed that it might be that swearing puts people in a ‘disinhibited’ state of mind.
“By swearing, we throw off social constraint and allow ourselves to push harder in different situations.”
To test the theory, the research team conducted two experiments with 192 total participants.
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In each, they asked participants to repeat either a swear word of their choice, or a neutral word, every two seconds while doing a chair push-up.
After completing the chair pushup challenge, participants answered questions about their mental state during the task.
The questions included measures of different mental states linked to disinhibition, including how much positive emotion participants felt, how funny they found the situation, how distracted they felt, and how self-confident they felt.
The questions also included a measure of psychological “flow”, a state in which people become immersed in an activity in a pleasant, focused way.
Overall, and confirming earlier research, the team found that participants who swore during the chair push-up task were able to support their bodyweight “significantly” longer than those who repeated a neutral word.
Combining the results of the two experiments as well as a previous experiment in an earlier study, they also found that the difference could be explained by increases in participants’ reports of psychological flow, distraction and self-confidence—all important aspects of disinhibition.
“These findings help explain why swearing is so commonplace.
“Swearing is literally a calorie neutral, drug free, low cost, readily available tool at our disposal for when we need a boost in performance.”
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Stephens and his colleagues plan to explore whether the boost from swearing works in any context where success depends on overcoming hesitancy.
Study co-author, Professor Nicholas Washmuth of the University of Alabama, added: “Our labs are now studying how swearing influences public speaking and romantic approach behaviors, two situations where people tend to hesitate or second-guess themselves.”
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