Swearing gives strength to deal with pain, says a study. Photo / 123RF
A couple of weeks ago Richard Stephens PhD presented a study to the Annual Conference of the British Psychological Society. It claimed swearing increases strength during physical exercise.
The way I read it, the research suggests that swearing not only helps people tolerate pain but makes them briefly stronger. This
may be why we swear when we hurt ourselves. If you scream f&%$ when you've been hit by a car, you'll not only feel less pain at the time but have increased strength to deal with hitting the ground a second later.
This is great news for profane sports people. Screaming the C word when you bowl will increase the speed of your delivery. Yelling MF as you tackle will make the hits harder. Shouting "s***" every time you throw a dart will make it fly straighter. If Joseph Parker yelled "crap" as he threw punches he'd be more likely to knock out giant Romanians. Kevin Barry should get on to that. He should also get on to his own hair. There's something shockingly unnatural happening up there.
If swearing helps with strength and pain relief why aren't we teaching our children to swear? If your 3-year-old shouts "f%$k sake" after stubbing her toe, instead of scolding her you should buy her an icecream. You should also pat her on the back for screaming "C, C, C" after standing on a piece of lego. Instead, we punish them for such behaviour. What's wrong with us?
When I was 4 years old, my sister soiled our shared bath water. I swore loudly and was pulled out by my dad and thrown into the cold Dunedin night. Admittedly she claims it was me who produced it and maybe it was, but either way there was a floater in the bath and it caused me to swear. Turns out according to science I did the right thing. I was only trying to increase my strength to deal with a complex situation. Actually, now I think of it, it was a wee.
