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

Would this work for CPSP(Chronic Post Stroke Pain)?

Your doctor should have had you swearing for 6 years already.

Or maybe your doctor can prescribe swearing in multiple languages.

People Good At Swearing Have This Major Advantage - larger vocabulary

December 2015

A rich vocabulary can protect against cognitive impairment October 2014

 The latest here:

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

Richard Stephens^1* and Olly Robertson^2,3

• ¹School of Psychology, Keele University, Keele, United Kingdom
• ²School of Psychology, Keele University, Keele, United Kingdom
• ³Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom

Previous research showing that swearing alleviates pain is extended by addressing emotion arousal and distraction as possible mechanisms. We assessed the effects of a conventional swear word (“fuck”) and two new “swear” words identified as both emotion-arousing and distracting: “fouch” and “twizpipe.” A mixed sex group of participants (N = 92) completed a repeated measures experimental design augmented by mediation analysis. The independent variable was repeating one of four different words: “fuck” vs. “fouch” vs. “twizpipe” vs. a neutral word. The dependent variables were emotion rating, humor rating, distraction rating, cold pressor pain threshold, cold pressor pain tolerance, pain perception score, and change from resting heart rate. Mediation analyses were conducted for emotion, humor, and distraction ratings. For conventional swearing (“fuck”), confirmatory analyses found a 32% increase in pain threshold and a 33% increase in pain tolerance, accompanied by increased ratings for emotion, humor, and distraction, relative to the neutral word condition. The new “swear” words, “fouch” and “twizpipe,” were rated as more emotional and humorous than the neutral word but did not affect pain threshold or tolerance. Changes in heart rate and pain perception were absent. Our data replicate previous findings that repeating a swear word at a steady pace and volume benefits pain tolerance, extending this finding to pain threshold. Mediation analyses did not identify a pathway via which such effects manifest. Distraction appears to be of little importance but emotion arousal is worthy of future study.

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 capacity on the periaqueductal gray region of the brain where endogenous opioids such as endorphins are produced (Sims-Williams et al., 2017).

One property of swearing that may usefully distract one’s attention from pain is if the word is perceived as humorous or novel. That swearing can be perceived as funny has been shown by Engelthaler and Hills (2018), who had 821 participants rate 5000 English words for humor. The word “fuck” was rated in the top 1% of funniest words. Similarly, swearing is perceived as a novel unit of language, evidenced by findings estimating that swear words make up less than 1% of all speech (Jay, 2009). Given that human attention appears biased toward detecting stimuli that occur less frequently over those occurring more frequently (Horstmann and Herwig, 2016), it would be of theoretical interest to further assess the importance of attention modulation 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 distraction through humor, novelty, or some other aspect, produces similar pain reducing effects as swearing.

The aim of this research study was to generate two new “swear” words, defined as non-pre-existing words that can be used in place of swear words, and to assess the pain-relieving effects of repeating these new words in the context of a cold pressor (ice water) pain challenge. The study provided an opportunity to explore some of the properties of swear words that underlie their psychological effects. Including new “swear” words enabled isolation of some of the properties of swear words in the absence of learned associations that true swear words have been theorized to possess (Jay, 2009).

The new “swear” were generated by an agency working for Nurofen. They were selected for the experiment by a panel consisting of the lead author, a lexicographer, an independent scientist with expertise in swearing, and two lay members. The selection process for the new “swear” words is described later. The cold pressor experiment included the two new words, “fouch” and “twizpipe,” alongside a conventional swear word, “fuck,” included partly as a research replication paradigm. There was also a neutral word control condition to provide a reference against which to assess the effects of the conventional and new swear words. This was a word to describe a table in line with previous similar studies (e.g., Stephens and Umland, 2011). Key aspects of this study were pre-registered on aspredicted.org (#21777) (see Supplementary Materials). Hypotheses (i) to (vii) were included on the pre-registration document and should be considered confirmatory, although please note that, in error, we specified one-way unrelated ANOVAs rather than one-way related ANOVAs. Hypothesis (viii) was not included on the pre-registration document and consequently should be considered exploratory.

It was hypothesized: (i) that emotion ratings would be greater for “fouch” vs. neutral word; (ii) that humor and distraction ratings would be greater for “twizpipe” vs. neutral word; (iii) that emotion, humor, and distraction ratings would be greater for “fuck” vs. neutral word; (iv) that cold pressor pain onset latency (pain threshold) would be increased for “fuck,” “fouch,” and “twizpipe” vs. neutral word; (v) that cold pressor pain tolerance latency would be increased for “fuck,” “fouch” and “twizpipe” vs. neutral word; (vi) that pain perception would be decreased for “fuck,” “fouch” and “twizpipe” vs. neutral word; (vii) that change from resting heart rate would be increased for “fuck” and “fouch” vs. neutral word; and (viii) that the effects of swearing on pain tolerance would be mediated by one or more of the emotion rating, humor rating, or distraction rating scores.