Having given Botox injections to thousands of patients, I know that some patients tolerate pain better if they curse during the procedure.
A British psychologist Richard Stephens seems to have made a career out of studying the effect of cursing on pain. His first paper Swearing as a response to pain, appeared in 2009 in NeuroReport. It showed that swearing improves pain tolerance in volunteers whose hand was submerged in icy water. His next paper, which I mentioned in a post in 2011, Swearing as a Response to Pain—Effect of Daily Swearing Frequency was published in The Journal of Pain.
In this study, Stephens looked at the effect of repeated daily swearing on experimental pain. The volunteers were again subjected to pain by submerging their hand into icy water. And they again showed that swearing reduces pain. However, people who tended to swear frequently throughout the day had less of a pain-relieving effect than those who did not.
His latest paper, Swearing as a Response to Pain: Assessing Hypoalgesic Effects of Novel “Swear” Words, was just published in the Frontiers in Psychology. The authors show that made-up “swear” words are not as effective as the good old four-letter f-word.
The conclusion of this 6,500-word research paper suggests that there is still a lot more swearing …er … I mean, studying to be done on this subject. Whether this is a good use of the British taxpayers’ money is another matter. Is the ultimate goal to save the British National Health Service money by replacing pain medications with scientifically validated swear words?
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