Swearing as a Pain-Killer: Research Report from Science News ANS

this article is from Andy Schmookler's site, None So Blind.  The comment at the end of the article is from him.  I have then also included the three comments on the article, the last from me.  Apparently, swearing actually reduces pain.
Find it here:  http://www.nonesoblind.org/blog/?p=7566&cpage=1#comment-429111  
--Kim

Swearing as a Pain-Killer: Research Report from Science News

A brief remark from me follows this article.

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"%&#$!" makes you feel better
Swearing like a sailor may alleviate pain

by Laura Sanders
Science News, August 1, 2009

Although the news probably won't stop parents from washing kids' mouths out with soap, it turns out that cussing a blue streak may be a good thing. A study appearing in the August 5 NeuroReport suggests that four-letter words may help alleviate pain.

"Swear words are unique," says Timothy Jay, a psychologist at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts in North Adams, who has studied the role of naughty words in linguistics. "They're really the link between the language system and the emotional system."

Inspiration for the new study came to psychologist Richard Stephens as he listened to his wife let loose with some unsavory language during the throes of labor. So he and his colleagues at Keele University in England conducted an experiment to test whether uttering emotion-laden choice words can actually change the amount of pain people feel. Undergraduate students (38 males and 29 females) each immersed a hand in cold water (about 5º Celsius) for as long as they could stand it, while repeating either a swear word or an innocuous word.

Before the study, participants were asked to write down five words they might say after hitting their thumb with a hammer?­?to control for varying foulness thresholds. One of these choices served as a swear word, and control words were five words the participants might use to describe a table. "A word someone might find shocking and scandalous is a word someone else might use every day," Stephens says.

When people had a swear word for their mantra (popular choices: the s-word, the f-word, two b-words and a c-word), they were able to keep a hand in the chilly water longer. What's more, after the ordeal, people who swore reported less pain.

Stephens and his colleagues turned up some interesting differences between men and women. Although swearing helped both sexes keep their hands in cold water longer, women reported a greater decrease in perceived pain after the experiment.

Swearing increased heart rate in both men and women, but had a greater effect on women. Researchers thought the heart rate increase might signal the beginning of a fight-or-flight response. Such a response may allow the body to tolerate or ignore pain, they say.

Many more studies of different kinds of pain and different measures of effects are needed before researchers fully understand the impact of swear words, Stephens says.

Jay says the study gets past the question of whether swearing should be frowned upon in polite society and instead addresses a scientific question. "When you try to describe swearing in moral terms?­?is it good or bad?­ it keeps you from getting at the deeper evolutionary links," he says. "Where did this come from? Why do we do it?"

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ABS remark: The article closes with a reference to "getting at the deeper evolutionary links." I'm wondering: what kind of links might there be? Swearing involves language. Deep evolutionary links implies dynamics going way back before language. So what could there have been, prior to language, that swearing would tap into? Do emotional grunts and angry shouts affect –with no words involved– affect pain similarly?

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3 Responses to "Swearing as a Pain-Killer: Research Report from Science News"

1. James Says:
2. August 12th, 2010 at 2:39 pm
   
3. Animals cy out when painfully aroused and, while they might experience pain differently than humans, the pain is there and so is the growel, roar, trumpet, shriek, squeal; sounds equated with the pain and possibly alieviating same.
4. James Says:
5. August 12th, 2010 at 5:45 pm
   
6. There seems to be verbal cues for pain in certain areas of the brain and remembering the cues can increase the feeling: while not an alleviation, the cues increase pain. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/100330122706.htm
7. Whit Says:
8. August 14th, 2010 at 8:41 am
   
9. It does seem to help to call some names at the hammer you just hit your finger with!
10. Whit
11. kim Says: Your comment is awaiting moderation.
12. August 22nd, 2010 at 5:56 pm
    
13. I have always felt that moaning actually reduced pain too, so that sort of thing might be the deeper link they are thinking of. Why do cats purr?
14. The paradox inherent in this whole concept is that if admitting that swear words help, made swear words into ordinary acceptable words, would they cease to work? If the words have to be "forbidden" to work, then we should keep some words "forbidden".