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How many times in your life have you gotten hurt and your first reaction to the pain is to scream out some form of profanity? It’s like some sort of reflex, right?
Well, according to a fantastic new study, cursing and using obscene gestures like giving the middle finger can help reduce pain and increase pain tolerance.
The study, published in the April 2024 issue of the journal Psychological Reports, involved 111 students at Kalamazoo College in Michigan, doing something known as the “cold pressor task.”
The cold pressor task is when a person submerges their hand in a bucket or tub filled with freezing cold ice water for as long they can take the pain.
61 percent of the 111 students were women, their average age was 19 years, and 69 percent of them were white.
During the test, one group of students were told to submerge their non-dominant hand in a tub of ice water and drop an f-bomb over and over as a a light blinked in one-second intervals.
The other group of students had to do the same thing only they were told to say the word “flat” instead of the f-bomb.
In another test, students again submerged their hand in a bucket of freezing water, only instead of cursing, they either displayed their the middle finger at one-second intervals or showed their index finger.
“We found that producing a taboo act in either language or gesture increased pain tolerance on the cold pressor task and reduced the experience of perceived pain compared to producing a neutral act,” the researchers wrote.
So, why were the people who were cursing up a storm or flipping the bird able to withstand more pain and feel less of it?
“One explanation involves the influence of taboo gestures on aggression. Pain can cause frustration, anger, and aggression, but swearing might reduce these feelings and allow us to endure pain longer,” wrote Arash Emamzadeh of Psychology Today.
It doesn’t completely explain the pain reduction and tolerance associated with cursing and obscene gestures though.
Another possible explanation includes humor as people may have found it comical to be doing all that swearing and flipping the bird, thus distracting them from the pain.
Another emotion regulation strategy, disinhibition, or “freely expressing how one feels instead of trying to control the feelings,” could also play a part in the reduced perception of pain, Emamzadeh added.
These uncertainties mean that more research is still needed, but at least the next time you swear up a storm when you stub your toe you can tell everyone around you that you’re just doing it for health reasons.