DUBAI: Breaking off from the stereotype, experts are saying that swearing, while traditionally associated with being ill-mannered, is actually not at all a bad thing.
In fact, they say it manifests a lot of good sides to the person who couldn’t kick the habit – and some advantages, too.
Huffington Post lined them all up and, with some bits of research back here at The Filipino Times, here goes:
1. Swearing makes for a convincing argument. Would you believe that?!? Indeed, it does. Huffpost cites BBC in a recent report: “By swearing, we not only communicate the meaning of a sentence, but also our emotional response to the meaning — our emotional reaction to something. It also allows us to express anger, disgust or pain, or indicate to someone that they need to back off, without having to resort to physical violence.”
2. Swearing could mean you’re just being honest. Studies published by researchers from Maastricht University, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Stanford and the University of Cambridge have found that people who swear a lot lie less often and have higher integrity levels.
3. Swearing is a sign of intelligence. An article published in the Washington Post, citing a study by psychologists Kristin Jay of Marist College and Timothy Jay of the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, stated that “people who could recall a lot of bad words also tended to be more eloquent in general. In other words, swearing is not necessarily a sign that a person has a limited vocabulary or can’t think of anything better to say.”
And so, as much has been said that swearing is the way of the unintelligent and illiterate, psychologists at Marist College in New York were able to establish a connection “between how fluent a person is in the English language and how fluent they are in swearing.”
What this correlation suggests, said an article on the portal ScienceAlert, is that swearing isn’t simply a sign of language poverty, lack of general vocabulary, or low intelligence.
Instead, swearing appears to be a feature of language that an articulate speaker can use in order to communicate with maximum effectiveness. And actually, some uses of swearing go beyond just communication.
4. Swearing helps improve pain tolerance. Haven’t you ever noticed? People utter expletives whenever they feel sudden pain like a thumb accidentally hit by the hammer.
The New York Times cited a study done by cognitive psychologist, Steven Arthur Pinker and co-authored by Richard Stephens, senior lecturer in psychology at Keele University, which found that swearing can increase one’s ability to withstand pain.
Swearing is linked to higher IQ. Here’s the takeaway from Stephens during an interview with Business Insider: “A lot of people have this idea that swearing is a sign of low IQ and inarticulateness. People swear almost because they can’t think of any other word to say.
If you think about it, that doesn’t really stand up to scrutiny.
There’s a really neat study done in the States a year or two ago. They looked at the relationship between people’s general language ability and their swearing ability.
Psychologists devised this alternative version called the “Swearing Fluency Task.” How many different swear words can you think of in a minute?
When they got people to do both tasks, interestingly, they found that people who knew the most swear words also had the best general language ability.
5. There are health benefits to swearing. Huffington Post, quoting Neel Burton, a psychiatrist based in Oxford, England, and author of “Heaven and Hell: The Psychology of the Emotions,” said: “The health benefits of swearing include increased circulation, elevated endorphins, and an overall sense of calm, control and well-being. ”
