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Swearing as a Response to Pain-Effect of Daily Swearing Frequency
Abstract
Unlabelled:
Previously we showed that swearing produces a pain lessening (hypoalgesic) effect for many people.(20) This paper assesses whether habituation to swearing occurs such that people who swear more frequently in daily life show a lesser pain tolerance effect of swearing, compared with people who swear less frequently. Pain outcomes were assessed in participants asked to repeat a swear word versus a nonswear word. Additionally, sex differences and the roles of pain catastrophizing, fear of pain, and daily swearing frequency were explored. Swearing increased pain tolerance and heart rate compared with not swearing. Moreover, the higher the daily swearing frequency, the less was the benefit for pain tolerance when swearing, compared with when not swearing. This paper shows apparent habituation related to daily swearing frequency, consistent with our theory that the underlying mechanism by which swearing increases pain tolerance is the provocation of an emotional response.
Perspective:
This article presents further evidence that, for many people, swearing (cursing) provides readily available and effective relief from pain. However, overuse of swearing in everyday situations lessens its effectiveness as a short-term intervention to reduce pain.
... Profanity is more tolerable in private gatherings as compared to formal meetings [64,83] and within the same gender groups as compared with groups involving mixed genders [61]. The objectives of using profane language include social bonding, handling emotional and physical pain, emotional catharsis, expressing power and control, establishing dominant-submissive relationships, confronting authorities, labeling others, conveying aggression, and humiliating others [64,66,67,[84][85][86][87][88][89][90]. Profanity is also used for humor and comedy [91][92][93] and to stimulate sexual excitement (Teresa E. [80]). ...
... Swearing and cursing can serve as an unconscious and mature self-defense mechanism to reduce the adverse effects of daily stressors. The earlier studies have also emphasized on the similar roles of profanity in releasing stress [82] and avoiding the fear of pain [90]. The literature, however, lacked studies focusing on the reduction of stress, anxiety, and depression through profanity. ...
... Emotional suppression and repression have been positively linked up with depression [32,34,35], anxiety [39], personality disorders [18,30,40], low self-esteem [34], irresponsibility, selfcenteredness [16, 26-28, 38, 41], maladaptive functioning [3], eating disorders [25], somatic problems [29], etc. Cognitive hyperactivity is an integral part of both anxiety [144] and depression [145]. Although the earlier literature is silent in reporting the specific connections of profanity with stress, anxiety, and depression, several relevant findings do support the notion that profanity may help in reducing stress, anxiety, and depression, the same way as it stays helpful in reducing physical pain [87,90,97,[146][147][148][149][150][151] and the effects of negative emotions [62]. Profanity has an established cathartic effect [62,66]. ...
https://www.hindawi.com/journals/drt/2023/8821517/
Background. Swearing is an increasing trend among men and women worldwide. Earlier studies on the positive aspects of profanity mostly relate to pain management and the release of negative emotions. The uniqueness of the current study is its analysis for a possible constructive role of profanity in stress, anxiety, and depression. Method. The current survey involved 253 conveniently selected participants from Pakistan. The study analyzed the role of profanity in connection to stress, anxiety, and depression. Profanity Scale and the Urdu version of Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale were used along with a structured interview schedule. Descriptive statistics, Pearson’s correlation coefficient, and -test were implied to obtain results. Results. The study revealed that the usage of profane language had significantly inverse correlations with stress (; ), anxiety (; ), and depression (; ). Higher profaners also revealed significantly lower levels of depression (, vs. , ; ; Cohen’s ) and stress (, vs. , ; ; Cohen’s ) as compared to lower profaners. Profanity had no significant correlations with age (; ) and education (; ). Men projected significantly higher levels of profanity as compared to women. Conclusion. The current study viewed profanity similar to the self-defense mechanisms and emphasized on its cathartic role in stress, anxiety, and depression.
... With respect to this, L1 swear words usually produce a larger SCR than do those from later learned languages (Eilola and Havelka, 2011;Pavlenko, 2012;Caldwell-Harris, 2015). Furthermore, in a series of experiments on the painrelieving effects of swearing (see Section 2.5), Stephens et al. (2009) and Stephens and Umland (2011) showed that participants' heart rates increased when swearing compared with uttering a neutral word. However, related work by Stephens and Robertson (2020) and Stephens et al. (2018) did not find evidence of changes to heart rate under swearing conditions. ...
... A significant body of research conducted by Stephens and colleagues has established that swearing has hypoalgesic, or pain-relieving, effects (Stephens et al., 2009;Stephens and Umland, 2011;Robertson et al., 2017;Stephens and Robertson, 2020). In a series of experiments, participants were asked to hold their hands in an ice water bath (cold pressor) for as long as they could tolerate, while vocalising swear words versus other (usually neutral) words. ...
... In addition, under the swearing condition, the participants' pain threshold (the point at which they reported feeling pain) increased; while pain perception (the degree to which they rated the experiment as painful) was lowered. Notably, Stephens and Umland (2011) found that the hypoalgesic effect was moderated by habituation to swearing. Participants who reported swearing frequently in daily life showed less increase in pain tolerance under the swearing condition, compared with those who reported less frequent use of taboo language. ...
Swearing produces effects that are not observed with other forms of language use. Thus, swearing is powerful. It generates a range of distinctive outcomes: physiological, cognitive, emotional, pain-relieving, interactional and rhetorical. However, we know that the power of swearing is not intrinsic to the words themselves. Hence, our starting question is: How does swearing get its power? In this Overview Paper, our aim is threefold. (1) We present an interdisciplinary analysis of the power of swearing (‘what we know’), drawing on insights from cognitive studies, pragmatics, communication, neuropsychology, and biophysiology. We identify specific effects of swearing, including, inter alia: emotional force and arousal; increased attention and memory; heightened autonomic activity, such as heart rate and skin conductance; hypoalgesia (pain relief); increased strength and stamina; and a range of distinctive interpersonal, relational and rhetorical outcomes. (2) We explore existing (possible) explanations for the power of swearing, including, in particular, the hypothesis that aversive classical conditioning takes place via childhood punishments for swearing. (3) We identify and explore a series of questions and issues that remain unanswered by current research/theorising (‘what we don’t know’), including the lack of direct empirical evidence for aversive classical conditioning; and we offer directions for future research.
... Swearing has also been found to decrease physical pain. Repeating a swear word while your hand is immerged in ice-water will allow you withstand the cold for 40 s longer, on average, compared to repeating a non-swear word [14]. This ice-water immersion yields scores for pain threshold (time at which pain is reported) and pain tolerance (time at which the hand is removed) and swearing has beneficial effects on both pain tolerance and threshold. ...
... This ice-water immersion yields scores for pain threshold (time at which pain is reported) and pain tolerance (time at which the hand is removed) and swearing has beneficial effects on both pain tolerance and threshold. It appears swearing is most effective at increasing pain thresholds among people who swear less often [14]. ...
... Due to the potential negative effects of swearing, physical therapists should carefully determine which patients are likely to experience the greatest benefit from swearing, without risking negative consequences. The patients most likely to benefit from swearing are those who have strong rapport and therapeutic alliance with their clinician [8], those who use swearing sparingly which will preserve the hypoalgesic effects of swearing [14], and those who can swear privately or among their peers [4]. ...
Background
Words can change the way a patient thinks, feels, and performs. Swearing, or uttering a word that is considered taboo, is an often-ignored part of our language, even though over 50% of the population swears “sometimes” or “often”. If used correctly, within a biopsychosocial approach to care, swearing has the potential to significantly improve patient outcomes.
Discussion
Swearing can create tighter human bonds and enhance the therapeutic alliance between a patient and a physical therapist. Improvements in social pain, physical pain tolerance, and physical pain threshold can occur by strategic swearing by our patients. Even physical performance measures, such as power and force could be enhanced if patients swear.
Conclusion
Although the mechanism by which swearing is effective is unclear, swearing deserves attention in the physical therapy setting based on evidence indicating potential positive effects on patient outcomes.
... This effect is known as "stress-induced analgesia" (Xie et al., 2008). Swearing can evoke aggression as an emotional reaction and consequently, mobilizes automatic fight or flight mechanisms thereby increasing pain tolerance (Stephens and Umland, 2011). However, the analgesic effect diminishes by habituation. ...
... Participants who indicated to swear more often in everyday life could not leave their hand longer in the ice water while repeating a swear word. This is probably because they had habituated to the emotional response of swearing (Stephens and Umland, 2011). People who swear more often in everyday life have a smaller emotional reaction to taboo words because the "taboo effect" diminishes and they get used to swear words as (more) normal words (Stephens and Umland, 2011). ...
... This is probably because they had habituated to the emotional response of swearing (Stephens and Umland, 2011). People who swear more often in everyday life have a smaller emotional reaction to taboo words because the "taboo effect" diminishes and they get used to swear words as (more) normal words (Stephens and Umland, 2011). In the described experiment, participants were instructed to choose a word they would use when banging their head accidentally. ...
Swearing, cursing, expletives – all these terms are used to describe the utterance of taboo words. Studies show that swearing makes up around 0.5% of the daily spoken content, however, the inter-individual variability is very high. One kind of pathologic swearing is coprolalia in Tourette syndrome (TS), which describes the involuntary outburst of taboo words. Coprolalia occurs in approximately 20-30% of all patients with TS. This review compares swearing in healthy people and coprolalia in people with TS and is the first one to develop a multidimensional framework to account for both phenomena from a similar perspective. Different research findings are embedded in one theoretical framework consisting of reasons, targets, functions/effects and influencing factors for swearing and coprolalia. Furthermore, the very limited research investigating obscene gestures and copropraxia, compulsive obscene gestures, is summarized. New research questions and gaps are brought up for swearing, obscene gestures and coprophenomena.
... 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;Bowers and Pleydell-Pearce, 2011). ...
... 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;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). ...
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.
... Research has shown that the act of repeating a swearword can elicit an increase in pain tolerance when compared with repeating a non-swear word [1][2][3]. The hypoalgesic effect has been explained as being mediated by the sympathetic nervous system triggered by swearing [3]. ...
... Ninety-five students (59 females and 36 males; age range 18-44; mean age 22.42 years) based on an a priori power calculation. The power calculation indicated that a minimum sample size of n = 90 will allow for 80% power to detect medium sized effects (d = 0.6) [2] based on comparisons across the swearing and non-swearing independent groups with alpha set at 0.05 [14]. However, a slightly larger number was recruited in anticipation of possible attrition. ...
... Four words were used for the current study. For the swear word in the British condition the word 'fuck' was chosen in order to best replicate previous studies [1,2] investigating swearing as a pain response. The neutral word in the British condition was 'cup'. ...
Background: This pre-registered study extends previous findings that swearing alleviates pain tolerance by assessing the effects of a conventional swear word (“fuck”) and two new “swear” words, “fouch” and “twizpipe”.Method: A mixed sex group of participants (N = 92) completed a repeated measures experimental design augmented by mediation analysis. The independent variable was Word with the levels, “fuck” v. “fouch” v. “twizpipe” v. a neutral word. The dependent variables were emotion rating, humour rating, distraction rating, cold pressor pain threshold, cold pressor pain tolerance, pain perception score and change from resting heart rate. Possible mediation effects were assessed for emotion, humour and distraction ratings. Results: 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, humour and distraction, relative to the neutral word condition. The new “swear” words, “fouch” and “twizpipe” were rated higher than the neutral word for emotion and humour although these words did not affect pain threshold or tolerance. Changes in heart rate, pain perception and were absent, as were mediation effects.Conclusions: 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. Our data cannot explain how such effects are manifest, although distraction appears to be of little importance, and emotion is worthy of future study. The new “swear” words did not alleviate pain even though participants rated them as emotion evoking and humorous.
... One potential answer lies in the common observation that people who are in pain often express their discontent [1]. Indeed, several experiments have now shown that verbalizing discontent by using swear words has a hypoalgesic effect [2,3]. A possible reason for this effect is that swearing provokes an emotional response in the speaker, evoking a fight/flight response that increases pain tolerance and decreases pain. ...
... Previous experimental research has found that swearing can increase pain tolerance in the context of the cold pressor procedure involving exposure to icy water [2,3]. These previous studies explicitly instructed individuals to speak in a normal tone and pace, precluding the possibility that the hypoalgesic effect of verbalizing swear words is caused by increased effort of the vocal cords (e.g. ...
... In study 1 we ensured to replicate the experimental procedure of Stephens and colleagues [2,3] utilizing the cold pressor paradigm with participants instructed to submerge their hand for as long as possible in ice water. The only difference was that we did not instruct participants to display their discontent using swear words but instead to display their discontent with a taboo gesticulation. ...
Background and aims
Prior research indicates that swearing increases pain tolerance and decreases pain perception in a cold pressor task. In two experiments, we extend this research by testing whether taboo hand gesticulations have a similar effect.
Methods
Study 1 focused on males and females who, across two trials, submerged an extended middle finger (taboo) and an extended index finger (control) in ice water until discomfort necessitated removal. Study 2 focused exclusively on pain perception in males who, across three trials, submerged their hand, flat, with extended middle finger and with extended index finger, for 45 s each.
Results
In study 1 taboo gesticulation did not increase pain tolerance or reduce pain perception compared with the index finger control condition, as a main effect or as part of an interaction with condition order. While there was a gesture×gender interaction for pain tolerance, this was driven by an increased pain tolerance for the index finger gesture for women but not men. The results of study 2 again showed that taboo gesticulation did not lower pain perception, although it did increase positive affect compared with both non-taboo gesture conditions.
Conclusions
Taken together these results provide only limited evidence that taboo gesticulation alters the experience of pain. These largely null findings further our understanding of swearing as a response to pain, suggesting that the activation of taboo schemas is not sufficient for hypoalgesia to occur.
... (Morris 2000, p. 174) As we saw in (2), Fuck you SCOTUS, much cussing is an emotive response to anger and/or frustration (Stephens and Zile 2017), reaction to something unexpected and, frequently but not necessarily, undesirable: imagine being disempowered by a court of law, stubbing a toe, being cut off in traffic (Popuşoi et al. 2018), being uncomfortably cold on a windy railway station waiting for a long-delayed train, or being ignored by a government official. As already mentioned, it is an established fact that swearing gives a positive shortterm boost by increasing heart rate and pain tolerance (hypoalgesia) compared with not swearing (Stephens and Umland 2011). Consequently, swearing has an expletive function: the use of a swear word lets off steam. ...
... Despite Bonnie's complaint in (47), swearing like Hayduke's bleaches out the standard force of obscenity; this bleaching effect was found in the Stroop Task reported in Section 2 as well as by Brophy and Partridge (1931); Ross (1960); Stephens and Umland (2011). This bleaching also affects the judgments of magistrates as reported in Allan and Burridge (2006, p. 36f Such legal decisions reflect the change in social attitudes: taboos on various kinds of profanity have been relaxed. ...
The taboo exploitation examined in this essay is swearing. Swearing intersects in complex ways with the giving and taking of pleasure and concomitantly coping with pain or, conversely, craving to inflict pain. Swearing is normally restricted to colloquial styles because it is commonly perceived to breach the rules of courtesy by offending against standards of good taste and good manners. The breaking of this taboo is an emotional release. Swearing has a special place in our neural anatomy, perhaps accounting for: (a) its effectiveness displaying pleasure and managing pain or the hypoalgesia and other physiological effects in laboratory studies; (b) for the tendency of any disparaging denotation or connotation to dominate the interpretation of the immediate context. I recognize five frequently synchronous functions for swearing from the utterer’s as well as the audience point of view: (i) The expletive function, often marking attitude to what is said. (ii) Abuse, insult, banter. (iii) Spicing up the message. (iv) Expression of social solidarity. (v) The discourse function. There is an additional from an audience point of view: (vi) Characterizing an individual’s behavior. For every function, the degree of pleasure and/or pain and the kind of taboo exploitation is assessed.
... Emotional expressions such as swearing (Stephens & Umland, 2011) and laughter (Dunbar et al., 2012) appear to modulate acute pain. Surprisingly, comparable effects of tearful crying, a typical response to acute pain, remain mostly unexplored, although pain-alleviating effects of crying were already suggested by Darwin (1872Darwin ( /1965. ...
... The current hypothesis about the effects of crying on pain responses was inspired by the presumed parallel with other emotional expressions such as swearing (Stephens & Umland, 2011) and laughter (Dunbar et al., 2012), which both seem to modulate pain responses. It was also based on more specific putative mechanisms related to either the release of endogenous opioids and oxytocin or emotional distraction. ...
Background:
Whereas previous studies revealed positive effects of emotional expressions such as swearing and laughing on acute pain, systematic research on the effects of crying on pain is missing. The rationale for the current study is that either a mere emotional distraction or changes in oxytocin and opioid levels represent a mechanism through which crying modulates pain, with the timing of mood changes as crucial information for distinguishing between potential mechanisms.
Methods:
In two studies, we exposed participants (Study 1: n = 57; Study 2: n = 70) to a sad movie and measured their mood, and exposed them to pain induction procedures (electric shock and cold-pressor test, respectively) before and after the film. Dependent variables were pain threshold, tolerance, and intensity. In addition to baseline and one immediate post-crying mood and pain response measurement in both studies, in Study 2, we repeated these procedures 20 and 50 min later to discern between the potential role of neurobiological substances and distraction.
Results:
Crying was elicited in 28 participants in Study 1 (49.1%) and 49 (70%) in Study 2. We found no systematic differences in pain and mood changes between criers and non-criers and no systematic dose-response relationship between crying and pain responses and mood. The only significant effects ran contrary to our hypotheses, showing detrimental effects of the occurrence (Study 1) and frequency of crying (both studies) on pain threshold.
Conclusions:
Results do not support the idea that crying has pain-alleviating effects, either via distraction or direct biological mechanisms.
... Female student-athletes, on the other hand, exhibited more anxiety in emotional attention, clarity, and repair than male student-athletes. They revealed higher emotional attention than male athletes and showed better clarity and emotional replacement to support psychological arrangement for sports (Fernández et al., 2020), although student-athletes' daily swearing frequency and trait anger-out were not correlated (Stephens & Umland, 2011). ...
... Lastly, when student-athletes swore more frequent daily, it was discovered that that this became a lower emotional response in terms of their habituation of indicating a lower-paintolerance experience (Stephens & Umland, 2011), lessened student-athletes' social support and led to their brand image losses (Vingerhoets et al., 2013). So far, student-athletes' daily swearing could be customized in both intentional and spontaneous expressions. ...
This study aims at investigating student-athletes’ swearing motives when attending sports training program and competitions. This study involved 210 respondents (n = 201, Mage = 21.65; SD = 3.994), which were organized by the National Sports Committee of Indonesia, Jawa Tengah Province, Indonesia. Data collection used a self-rated questionnaire with a 5-Likert scale measuring for expressing anger, stressing from opponents, relieving tension and frustration, and customizing daily expression using the IBM SPSS software analyses. The results postulated that the scaled determinants empirically triggered student-athletes’ swearing motives in expressing anger (M = 2.13; SD =.922), stressing from opponents (M = 2.15; SD = 1.005), relieving tension and frustration (M = 1.98; SD = 1.019), and customizing daily expression (M = 2.10; SD = 1.087), although there were no statistically significant differences among those determinants. The dependent variable showed that F (4, 202), p = .000; Wilks’ Lambda = .58; and partial eta squared = .13, whilst the normality, linearity, and homoscedasticity consequences were not transgressive. Hence, among the determinants had positive correlations (r = .769, n = 210, p.01), where student-athletes’ swearing expression levels sequentially placed stressing from the opponents associated with expressing anger, customizing daily expression, and relieving tension and frustration. Meanwhile, social media was mostly eligible to determine gender-based swearing expressions (females = 50.4%, males = 43.2%), expressed by the local swearwords. These swearing motives constitute student-athletes’ intrinsic and extrinsic relationships, whether positive or negative actions that conditionally differentiate student-athletes’ psychological well-being across the dimensions of self-acceptance, autonomy, environment and personal maturation
... Based on what it was believed that SW was usually used to express anger, emotions, or feelings (Jay & Janschewitz, 2008), the frequency of people in using them will vary, depended on their social contexts (Mehl & Pennebaker, 2003;Stephens & Umland, 2017). Their culture and background would also influence the way they choose which SW to which situations or persons (Fägersten, 2007). ...
... These word choices might reflect stable psychological processes; that was, they could be reflective of personality (Funder & Ozer, 2007). It was also stated that the more they used the SW, they may experience a hardened feeling because their pain tolerance was less compared to the time they do not use the SW (Stephens & Umland, 2017 Based on the answers, most of the students felt angry if someone uses any of the SW to them. Only few stated that they felt sad. ...
... The swearwords that we emit during pain are from the repertoire of the affects and emotions. We note that the swearwords in return act on the perceived pain, and it has been shown that they may be able to reduce it [36,37]! We swear when the hammer injures our finger. ...
Tinnitus is an auditory sensation without external acoustic stimulation or significance, which may be lived as an unpleasant experience and impact the subject’s quality of life. Tinnitus loudness, which is generally low, bears no relation to distress. Factors other than psychoacoustic (such as psychological factors) are therefore implicated in the way tinnitus is experienced. The aim of this article is to attempt to understand how tinnitus can, like chronic pain, generate a ‘crisis’ in the process of existence, which may go as far as the collapse of the subject. The main idea put forward in the present article is that tinnitus may be compared to the phenomenon of pain from the point of view of the way it is experienced. Although the analogy between tinnitus and pain has often been made in the literature, it has been limited to a parallel concerning putative physiopathological mechanisms and has never really been explored in depth from the phenomenological point of view. Tinnitus is comparable to pain inasmuch as it is felt, not perceived: it springs up (without intention or exploration), abolishes the distance between the subject and the sensation (there is only a subject and no object), and has nothing to say about the world. Like pain, tinnitus is formless and abnormal and can alter the normal order of the world with maximum intensity. Finally, tinnitus and pain enclose the subject within the limits of the body, which then becomes in excess. Tinnitus may be a source of suffering, which affects not only the body but a person’s very existence and, in particular, its deployment in time. Plans are thus abolished, so time is no longer ‘secreted’, it is enclosed in an eternal present. If the crisis triggered by tinnitus is not resolved, the subject may buckle and collapse (depression) when their resources for resisting are depleted. The path may be long and winding from the moment when tinnitus emerges to when it assaults existence and its eventual integration into a new existential norm where tinnitus is no longer a source of disturbance.
... In a study by Mohr (2013: 5), for example, participants were able to keep their hands longer in extremely cold water while repeating the word shit rather than the word shoot. Stephens and Umland (2011) and Swee and Schirmer (2015) contended that swearing is a reaction to some sort of pain or discomfort. A later analysis by Stephens and Robertson (2020) explored swearing, particularly new swear words, as a response to pain and found that newly coined swear words do not give the same pain-comforting effects as older ones. ...
This study discusses how profanity is used online and whether it records any gender-related differences. It explores how often and why certain swear words are used on Jordan’s Twitter. The data are harvested by a computer specialist and consist of 5,000 English tweets—2,500 by females and 2,500 by males. The tweets were posted from Jordan within the period 2015-2020 and were randomly selected from 500 different accounts. The study concluded that the most common swear words on Jordan’s Twitter were fuck, shit, damn and hell, and that there is statistical evidence that women swear more than men, contrary to several previous studies. Women also tend to use a greater variety of swear words, often mitigating their effect through abbreviated forms. The study also attributed the high frequency of the swear words found in the data to their syntactic flexibility, mother-tongue interference, and the fact that most of these words are closed monosyllables.
... Other research has demonstrated the positive effects swearing can have on reducing pain. Stephens and Umland (2011) found that swearing could raise pain tolerance. However, swearing on a daily basis hindered the effect of any benefit swearing can have in helping to reduce pain. ...
Background: This research studies about profanity types made by professional players in the documentaries video True Sight by Valve on YouTube. Purpose: The aims of this study are to recognize the applications of each profanity types, to explain the types of profanity word the utterances that used, and to find out the most frequent types of profanity types of the utterances that used by the professional players in documentaries video True Sight on YouTube. Design and methods: To achieve the aims of the study, the writer uses Steven Pinker’s theory of profanity types to analyzing the data. This study is a qualitative which the writer interprets of utterances that contain the types of profanity words in this documentaries series. Results: The result of study showed that 30 utterances of profanity word were successfully identified that made by the professional players. In this study, the writer found that the professional player uses all the types of profanity, such as, abusive swearing, idiomatic swearing, dysphemistic swearing, cathartic swearing and emphatic swearing. There are 32 types that identified out of 30 utterances uttered by the professional player which conclude 9 emphatic swearing or 28.1%, 7 cathartic and idiomatic swearing or 21.9% , 5 abusive swearing or 15.6%, and 4 dysphemistic swearing or 12.5%. So it can be concluded that the dominant profanity types is emphatic swearing, because this documentaries video contained many profanities of the professional player as a gamer in the gaming community who has a culture of not to speak in a formal conversation.
... Swearing elicits physiological responses such as elevated heart rate and increased galvanic skin response (Bowers & Pleydell-Pearce, 2011;Buchanan et al., 2006;Harris et al., 2003). Moreover, swearing aloud increases tolerance to pain (Stephens et al., 2009;Stephens & Robertson, 2020;Stephens & Umland, 2011) and boosts physical performance (Stephens et al., 2018). ...
Why do swear words sound the way they do? Swear words are often thought to have sounds that render them especially fit for purpose, facilitating the expression of emotion and attitude. To date, however, there has been no systematic cross-linguistic investigation of phonetic patterns in profanity. In an initial, pilot study we explored statistical regularities in the sounds of swear words across a range of typologically distant languages. The best candidate for a cross-linguistic phonemic pattern in profanity was the absence of approximants (sonorous sounds like l, r, w and y). In Study 1, native speakers of various languages (Arabic, Chinese, Finnish, French, German, Spanish; N = 215) judged foreign words less likely to be swear words if they contained an approximant. In Study 2 we found that sanitized versions of English swear words – like darn instead of damn – contain significantly more approximants than the original swear words. Our findings reveal that not all sounds are equally suitable for profanity, and demonstrate that sound symbolism – wherein certain sounds are intrinsically associated with certain meanings – is more pervasive than has previously been appreciated, extending beyond denoting single concepts to serving pragmatic functions.
... The recognised and widely experienced association of swearing with taboo, emotion, and strong feelings can be neutralised by a high frequency of use (Beers Fägersten 2012;Johnson & Lewis 2010;Rieber et al. 1979; see also Stephens & Umland 2011). In other words, the more a person swears, the greater the possibility that strong emotions are neither invoked nor perceived (Rosenberg et al. 2017). ...
Interpersonal Pragmatics of Swearing: definitions, criteria, methods of investigation, positive and negative interpersonal functions
... A second policy implication deals with officer training. Given that research has found profane language to frequently be used in stressful situations (Rassin & Muris, 2005;Rothwell, 1971;Stephens & Umland, 2011) and encounters where someone is attempting to establish dominance (Selnow, 1985;White et al., 1994;Zimmerman & West, 1979), which are types of encounters common in policing, a broader training approach might be needed to prevent the use of profanity. While classroom-based training might be helpful, the combination of classroom and scenario-based training might be more effective. ...
The current study was conducted to test how the presence of profane officer language during a use of force incident impacts how civilians perceive the reasonableness of the applied force. The study followed a 1 × 4 independent groups design with random assignment to one of four test conditions. Two dashcam use of force videos were stripped of audio and subsequently transcribed with a clean and profane-laden de-piction of the officer's language. Participants (n = 234) answered a short questionnaire after watching their randomly assigned video. Measures include a 5-item reason-ableness index, demographics, and test conditions. Two-way ANOVA and OLS regression were performed. Overall, participants considered videos with profane language to be less reasonable than the same video with clean language. While significant , most differences also correspond with medium and large effect sizes. This research found that profane officer language impacts how civilians perceive force reasonableness. Practical and policy implications are presented to move policing forward.
... Since swearing can be the effect of catharsis, it has a positive impact on releasing anger and pain. It is supported by Stephens & Umland (2011) in their experiment. The participants were asked to hold ice water while saying swear words and natural words. ...
Traditionally, swearing was considered a taboo subject. However, in today’s era swearing has become a common thing. It is practiced not only by men but women also practice it. To avoid social impoliteness, it is practiced in various ways, purposes, and languages based on the context. This research analyzed the types and functions of English swearing used by females on WhatsApp seen from a sociolinguistics perspective. Ljung (2011) and Vingerhoets & Bylsma (2013)’s theories were applied in this research. Observations were conducted through WhatsApp stories in gaining eight written utterances data and virtual interviews were conducted by eight participants in gaining the functions of swearing data. The results show four types of swear words covered the use of swearing, namely: religious theme, scatological theme, sexual activities theme, and mother/family theme. Each of these themes has different functions depending on the context of utterances. Other results indicate that females function English swearing in intra-individual and inter-individual. Intra-individual functions lead to show anger, frustration, and annoyance. Inter-individual functions lead to insulting others and showing solidarity. These functions were triggered by positive emotions (excitement and chill out with friends) and negative emotions (anger, frustration, and annoyance). Mostly Females swear triggered by negative emotions.
... montre que le fait de jurer peut avoir un effet hypoalgésique : le fait de jurer permet au sujet d'atténuer sa sensation douloureuse. Une étude ultérieure(Stephens et al., 2011) montre un phénomène d'habituation : les sujets qui ont l'habitude jurer quotidiennement sont moins sensibles à l'effet hypoalgésique de la prononciation de jurons.Selon nous, ces études montrent que le juron permet non pas de signaler, de montrer ou d'exprimer une émotion, mais de la gérer, de s'en remettre 80 . Nous ne savons pas quelle est la cause qui rend possible cette gestion : est-ce parce que le locuteur extériorise une agressivité ou bien est-ce parce que le retour au langage réaffirme le locuteur dans son statut de locuteur et donc le rassure quant à sa puissance d'agir sur le monde (qui est notre hypothèse) ? ...
Les définitions actuelles des interjections et des onomatopées ne permettent manifestement pas de circonscrire ces faits de langue avec précision, ce qui aboutit à des classifications hétéroclites dans la littérature et à des extractions d’occurrences contenant nécessairement des faux positifs pour certains et laissant des faux négatifs pour d’autres. Les raisons sont multiples : tout d’abord, parce que les différentes écoles de linguistique ne sont pas prioritairement conçues pour décrire des faits de langue isolés syntaxiquement, ensuite, parce que certaines propriétés traditionnellement attribuées à ces faits de langue font écran à leur description. Par exemple, l’interjection serait la manifestation d’une émotion, elle serait un indice, un marqueur de modalité d’énonciation, quand l’onomatopée serait un signe motivé, iconique, servant à imiter un référent. Nous défendrons l’idée que ces propriétés masquent la fonction première de ces faits de langue, qui est de permettre au locuteur, au moment même de la production effective du discours, de réduire la distance entre l’énoncé qu’il vise (son énoncé idéal) et l’énoncé qu’il parvient à formuler. Nous avons intégralement repris la démarche définitionnelle, en commençant par une définition en intension, élaborée à partir d’un travail à très forte dimension théorique, pour ensuite proposer une classification des types d’interjections et d’onomatopées en fonction des matrices lexicogéniques dont elles sont issues. Cette méthode nous a permis de mettre en lumière une stratégie d’intégration de l’interjection dans la structure phrastique, que nous avons nommée le rattrapage syntaxique. Nous montrerons que cette stratégie est la version syntaxique d’un phénomène que l’on retrouve déjà au niveau du phonème et au niveau du lexème. La dernière partie de notre thèse est consacrée à la description du rattrapage syntaxique et à la recherche des contraintes qui s’y appliquent. Pour ce faire, nous analyserons un corpus d’interjections intégrées à des structures phrastiques et aurons recours à des outils conceptuels élaborés par la Linguistique Générative, la Linguistique Cognitive et la Théorie des Opérations Énonciatives.
... Consider for instance the two following tweets containing swearing from the StackOverflow Offensive Comments dataset (Fišer et al., 2018): advantageous social effects, including strengthen the social bonds and improve conversation harmony, when swear word is used in ironic or sarcastic contexts (Jay, 2009a). Another study by Stephens and Umland (2011) found that swearing in cathartic ways is able to increase pain tolerance. Furthermore, Johnson (2012) has shown that the use of swear words can improve the effectiveness and persuasiveness of a message, especially when used to express an emotion of positive surprise. ...
Swearing plays an ubiquitous role in everyday conversations among humans, both in oral and textual communication, and occurs frequently in social media texts, typically featured by informal language and spontaneous writing. Such occurrences can be linked to an abusive context, when they contribute to the expression of hatred and to the abusive effect, causing harm and offense. However, swearing is multifaceted and is often used in casual contexts, also with positive social functions. In this study, we explore the phenomenon of swearing in Twitter conversations, by automatically predicting the abusiveness of a swear word in a tweet as the main investigation perspective. We developed the Twitter English corpus SWAD (Swear Words Abusiveness Dataset), where abusive swearing is manually annotated at the word level. Our collection consists of 2577 instances in total from two phases of manual annotation. We developed models to automatically predict abusive swearing, to provide an intrinsic evaluation of SWAD and confirm the robustness of the resource. We model this prediction task as three different tasks, namely sequence labeling, text classification, and target-based swear word abusiveness prediction. We experimentally found that our intention to model the task similarly to aspect-based sentiment analysis leads to promising results. Subsequently, we employ the classifier to improve the prediction of abusive language in several standard benchmarks. The results of our experiments show that additional abusiveness feature of the swear words is able to improve the performance of abusive language detection models in several benchmark datasets.
... montre que le fait de jurer peut avoir un effet hypoalgésique : le fait de jurer permet au sujet d'atténuer sa sensation douloureuse. Une étude ultérieure(Stephens et al., 2011) montre un phénomène d'habituation : les sujets qui ont l'habitude jurer quotidiennement sont moins sensibles à l'effet hypoalgésique de la prononciation de jurons.Selon nous, ces études montrent que le juron permet non pas de signaler, de montrer ou d'exprimer une émotion, mais de la gérer, de s'en remettre 80 . Nous ne savons pas quelle est la cause qui rend possible cette gestion : est-ce parce que le locuteur extériorise une agressivité ou bien est-ce parce que le retour au langage réaffirme le locuteur dans son statut de locuteur et donc le rassure quant à sa puissance d'agir sur le monde (qui est notre hypothèse) ? ...
Abstract : The current definitions of interjections and onomatopoeias, which are mainly based on semiotic criteria (interjections are indexes, onomatopoeias are icons), are seemingly not precise enough to draw up a list of items belonging to these categories. This results in heterogeneous classifications in the literature and different data extraction strategies, which in turn entails the presence of items that some will regard as “false positives” or “false negatives”. We will defend the idea that the primary function of these words is to enable the speaker to reduce the distance between their actual speaking performance (the actual utterances) and their intended speech (the ideal utterances). We will devise the defining enterprise from the very beginning, starting with the intension of the words interjection and onomatopoeia. Then, we will focus on their extension and will classify different types of interjections and onomatopoeias. The classification will be based on the word formation process they stem from. We will show that interjections and onomatopoeias have different definitions “en langue”, “en parole” and “en corpus”. “En langue”, these words are tools, “en parole”, they are performances, since the speaker reshapes or moulds his/her vocal production, and “en corpus”, interjections and onomatopoeias are imprints of the above-mentioned performance. Our method will also reveal a word formation strategy that we call “Syntactic Adjustment” (“SA”), and which consists in incorporating interjections into syntactic structures. We will show that this SA is merely the syntactic version of a strategy that can also be observed at the phonemic and at the lexical level and that could be described as a word formation process. In part III of our dissertation, we will describe the SA and will expose some of the rules that restrict its use. To do this, we will compare the SA with converted interjections (yuck! > yucky ; oh God! > to be oh-Godding at something) and will also analyze a corpus of syntactically integrated interjections. We will make use of concepts developed in different theoretical frameworks, mainly in Cognitive Grammar, Generative Linguistics and Theory of Enunciative Operations.
Keywords : interjection, onomatopoeia, definition, classification, syntax, inferences
... An additional variable, the influence of daily swearing frequency on the pain-lessening effect of swearing was assessed. The more often participants used swearing in their daily life, the shorter time they were able to hold their hand in cold water while repeating a swear word [11]. This study is similar to ours in that it is an example of a decreased physiological response to swear words as the frequency of swearing increases. ...
... Despite the prevalence of swearing, its apparent increase in public use (DuFrene & Lehman, 2002;Jay, 2009a;Johnson, 1996Johnson, , 2004Twenge et al., 2017), and a better understanding of its potential social and psychological benefits (Byrne, 2017;Jay, 2000;Philipp & Lombardo, 2017;Pinker, 2007;Stephens & Umland, 2011;Vingerhoets et al., 2013), there has been little research on the topic in the healthcare field (Stone et al., 2010), particularly in the counselling setting. It is for this reason that attempts have been made to draw on research from the field of psycholinguistics in application to counselling, to undergird speculation that swearing might promote therapeutic processes (Beers Fägersten & Stapleton, 2017;Esposito, 2014;Minot, 2013;n.d.;Trickey, 2016). ...
In this overview, the existing research on swearing, cussing, and cursing is surveyed in the context of mental health therapy and counseling-related pursuits. Swearing is a subject of longstanding controversy, dating back to the days in which prominent figures of the psychotherapeutic tradition like Albert Ellis and Fritz Perls affirmed profane language in their counseling interviews. Although profanity is seemingly taken for granted as a categorically taboo subject matter in present-day counseling, the notion that swearing might add value to counseling remains underrepresented in the literature. Presented here are studies both supporting and contradicting the generally accepted standards for counselor use of profanity in clinical practice,
illustrating the context-laden aspects of the importance of language. This article represents a platform that could act to further academic inquiry in the context of swearing in therapy on the part of therapists in framing, staking out, and subsequently showing their own position on whether swearing is simply wrong or that there is a 'right way' to use it. Ultimately the underpinnings of this article focus on an introduction to a much deeper problematic of language in therapy.
... Research has furthermore established a range of physical, mental, and social benefits of swearing (see Vingerhoets et al. 2013 for a full review). Not only can swearing be pain-relieving (Stephens, Atkins and Kingston 2009;Stephens and Umland 2011), stress-reducing (Rassin and Muris 2005;Jay et al. 2006), and cathartic (Wajnryb 2005;Pinker 2007;Dynel 2012), it can also convey credibility (Rassin and Van der Heijden 2005), signal levity and intensify humor (Beers Fägersten 2012;Jay 1999;Norrick 2012), index intimacy and solidarity (Daly et al. 2004;Stapleton 2003Stapleton , 2010, and even facilitate professional interaction (Baruch and Jenkins 2007). The recent publication of Adams' (2016) In Praise of Profanity and Byrne's (2017), Swearing Is Good for You: The Amazing Science of Bad Language confirms an ever more overt appreciation of the benefits of swearing. ...
Swearing has traditionally been associated with spoken language; however, swear words are appearing more often in print and, notably, explicitly featured in commercial products. In this paper, we consider this development an example of the commodification of swear words, or ‘swear words for sale’. Our analyses of English-language swear word products show that the taboo nature of swear words is exploited and capitalized upon for commercial gain. We argue that swear word commodities trade on sociolinguistically incongruous aspects of swear word usage, increasing salability of the swear word products by targeting specific demographics. Specifically, we analyze (1) women’s apparel and accessories, (2) domestic items and home décor, and (3) children’s products for adults or articles targeting parents of young children. The study concludes with a discussion of whether the popularization of swearing via such commodification may ultimately result in a loss of distinctiveness and devaluation.
... 11 See Baruch and Jenkins (2007); Bayard and Krishnayya (2001); Beers Fägersten (2007); Benwell (2001); Cheshire (1982); Hughes (1992); Romaine (1999). 12 Research has shown that swearing is associated with enhanced pain tolerance (Stephens et al. 2009, Stone 2010Stephens and Umland 2011;Dong 2010). ...
Swearing is a linguistic practice common to most societies and cultures, even though there is great variation in what constitutes swearing in different cultures and how it is expressed, depending on the hierarchy of values that are prevalent in a given society. Swearing is therefore an intrinsic part of a language (Dewaele 2010; Ljung 2011) and since any “structure of a language is a powerful tool for understanding a culture” (Sagarin 1968: 18), whatever one’s own personal attitudes are towards this phenomenon, the socio-cultural significance of swearing must be acknowledged. Accordingly, in recent decades, the practice of swearing has been the subject of increasing amounts of scholarly investigation. Swearing is also becoming less marked as a sociolinguistic activity and it is no longer mostly confined to private interpersonal settings, but is progressively accepted in new domains including literature, television, films, social media, and so on (Henry 2006; Dynel 2012). The present paper investigates the different translation strategies chosen to render swearwords from the original Italian into the English subtitles in the film Gomorra (Garrone 2008) and the Italian TV series bearing the same title (Sky Italia 2014), both based on the eponymous book by Roberto Saviano. The study, conducted on a comparative, descriptive, non-judgemental basis, has been carried out by analysing the Italian audio scripts of the film and the TV series and the English subtitles contained in the Italian DVDs. The overall conclusion is that subtitles allow swearwords’ denotative and domesticated messages to get across; however, because no translations were available in English for the Neapolitan dialect items, many of the sociocultural-specific references embedded in the source text tend to remain opaque and swearwords’ sociopragmatic nuances are often flattened or even disappear.
... In an unorganized situation, the swearing tends to evoke an unhappy situation while in an organized situation, a happy situation is identified. Swearing is generally used to identify the group (Tysdahl, 2008), intimacy and connection (Winters & Duck, 2001), pain (Stephens et al. 2009) (Stephens & Umland, 2011), impoliteness or politeness (Dynel, 2012), contextual appropriateness (Jay & Janschewitz, 2008), an impression (Cavazza & Guidetti, 2014), and humor (Beers Fägersten, 2017). ...
Character equivalence and offensive word rank in subtitling context are understudied on the previous studies on euphemisation strategies. The exclusion of these two concerns leaves the prior constructed euphemisation strategies unable to explain how shifts on narrative identity might occur and how taboo words are functionally negotiated. In addressing this issue, the study investigates the relationship between offensive word levels with character equivalence and narrative identity, types of euphemisation strategies, and the strategies' implementation. The data were collected from the English and Indonesian versions of four films containing taboo words, which were analyzed by applying the theories of offensiveness rank by Ofcom, constructed in English as a foreign language context, and character equivalence by Petrucci. The findings indicate that offensive word translation suffers a rank shift on offensive word ranks Departing from these findings. We propose euphemisation strategies with offensive word rank and character equivalence as the primary narrative basis with mediality and subtitling standard as the primary mechanical basis. Those strategies are downgrading, degrading, sidegrading, outgrading, ingrading, and retrograding. The reasons of euphemisation strategy implementation are bipolarly divided into aesthetics and mechanics in relation to distances and perspectives of the applied offensive words.
Journal on English as a Foreign Language http://e-journal.iain-palangkaraya.ac.id/index.php/jefl
... Note how the injured did not take time to formulate his/her response to the situation, but it occurred almost instantaneously afterwards. This is later proven by Stephens & Umland [33] where people use swear words to relieve or reduce experienced pain. ...
Social media, is often the go-to place where people discuss their opinions and share their feelings. As some platforms provide more anonymity than others, users have taken advantage of that privilege, by sitting behind the screen, the use of profanity has been able to create a toxic environment. Although not all profanities are used to offend people, it is undeniable that the anonymity has allowed social media users to express themselves more freely, increasing the likelihood of swearing. In this study, the use of profanity by different gender classes is compiled, and the findings showed that different genders often employ swear words from different hate categories, e.g. males tend to use more terms from the "disability" hate group. Classification models have been developed to predict the gender of tweet authors, and results showed that profanity could be used to uncover the gender of anonymous users. This shows the possibility that profiling of cyberbullies can be done from the aspect of gender based on profanity usage.
... Swearing can thus be thought of as serving to reduce an individual's emotional tension or distress level -and as a way to intensify communication (Ginsburg et al., 2003;Vingerhoets et al., 2013). For example, it was specifi cally argued that swearing provides readily available and eff ective relief from pain (Stephens & Umland, 2011). Pinker (2007) even distinguishes at least fi ve diff erent methods of swearing: descriptively, idiomatically, abusively, emphatically, and cathartically. ...
Gilles de la Tourette syndrome is a common, multifaceted neuropsychiatric disorder characterized by multiple motor and vocal tics. Although numerous neuroanatomical and neurophysiological particularities have been documented, there is no general concept or overarching theory to explain the pathophysiology of Tourette syndrome. Given the premonitory urges that precede tics and the altered sensorimotor processing in Tourette syndrome, the “Theory of Event Coding” (TEC) seems to be an attractive framework. TEC assumes that perceptions and actions are bound together and encoded using the same neural code to form so-called “event files.” Depending on the strength of the binding between perception and action, partial repetition of features of an event file can lead to increasing cost because existing event files need to be reconfigured. This is referred to as “partial repetition costs”, which appear to be increased in Tourette patients. This indicates stronger binding within “event files” in Tourette.
... Swearing can thus be thought of as serving to reduce an individual's emotional tension or distress level -and as a way to intensify communication (Ginsburg et al., 2003;Vingerhoets et al., 2013). For example, it was specifi cally argued that swearing provides readily available and eff ective relief from pain (Stephens & Umland, 2011). Pinker (2007) even distinguishes at least fi ve diff erent methods of swearing: descriptively, idiomatically, abusively, emphatically, and cathartically. ...
In healthy individuals, expletive language occurs as swearing/cursing, in patients with Tourette syndrome as coprolalia. Swearing and coprolalia thus have been likened as two ends of a continuum. Both occur apparently automatically, are triggered by emotional activation, e. g., by stress or pain, and are typically instantiations of nonpropositional language. Neurobiologically, a thalamo-cortical-limbic dysfunction is discussed. However, there are notable differences between the two: While swearing fulfills intra- and inter-individual functions coprolalia seems less functional and can result in considerable social stigma because of their occurrence in socially inappropriate situations. Patients with coprolalia report antecedents, especially feelings of urge and premonitory sensations, like itches or tingles. Finally, coprolalia seems to extend to more serious and insulting expressions compared to “everyday” swearwords.
... In brief, the research of slurs and swear words to date is taken place on the social situation which participants (speaker or listener) involved, as found in Janschewitz (2008) are involving 84 undergraduate male and female students. Moreover, Jay, Caldwell-Harris, and King (2008) have tested the recall of taboo words on 19 to 39-year-old students, while Stephens and Umland (2011) have analyzed swearing on 71 undergraduates, or Nasution & Rosa (2012) have focused on swearwords of Indian users of Yahoo Messenger. Therefore, the research of slurs and swear words in the Bronte sisters' novels show novelty in the research. ...
This research aimed at identifying the categories of slurs, presenting how swear words expressed in male or female characters of Bronte sisters’ novels, and examining the social status scale in presenting slurs. The research was a qualitative content analysis of which process was categorizing, comparing, and concluding. The researchers employed MAXQDA 2018.1 (the data analysis tool) for analyzing the samples of five female and male main characters of the novel of Emily Bronte (Wuthering Heights), Charlotte Bronte (Jane Eyre), and Anne Bronte (The Tenant of Wildfell Hall). The research has shown three out of nine Thurlow’s pejorative items (social personality, phallocentric, and sexist), the possible formation of social personality slurs, the identification of swear words for showing speakers’ emotional states, and the influence of social status scale on the expression of slurs. It proves that slurs and swear words are used to deliver a derogatory attitude. The sexist slurs are not only delivered from male characters to female characters, but it is also found in Catherine Earnshaw targeting Nelly although they have similar gender background (female). Slurs are found in the characters from both high and low social rank since the plot develops the relationship amongst the characters. One unexpected finding is the different swear words between the characters. Swear words found in the novel are not only dominated by the word devil, damn, or by hell, but also the word deuce and humbug. The varied swear words proves that the male characters do not dominantly produce swear words, but also euphemistic expression.
... A small study examining laughter, found that participants who watched a humorous video had reduced serum cortisol levels compared to controls (Berk et al., 1989). Two studies examining the impact of swearing on pain, found that participants who were asked to swear repeatedly during submersion of their hand in icy water, had an increased heart rate and were able to keep their hand submerged for longersuggesting the acute stress response was enhanced ( Stephens et al., 2009, Stephens andUmland, 2011). ...
This chapter, Stress Pain and Recovery: neuro-immune-endocrine interactions and clinical practice, was published in 2017 book titled Psychologically-informed Physiotherapy: embedding psychosocial perspectives within clinical management
... For many individuals, swearing in response to acute pain eases the pain or has a hypoalgesic effect (Stephens et al., 2018). Swearing is an extreme form of emotional language that has been shown to increase individuals' heart rates and skin conductance; research has identified a causal path by which swearing triggers an emotional response, activating the sympathetic nervous system and facilitating a stress-induced analgesia that is mediated by sympathetic nervous system activation (Stephens &Umland, 2011). ...
Verbal bullying among adolescents, which has become increasingly prevalent in recent years, often involves swearing or sexually ridiculing one's family members or peers. Because many factors underlying the initiation of verbal bullying remain unknown, Giorgi's phenomenological method was used to examine the essence and meaning of verbal bullying among adolescents, which is an urgent issue in the field of nursing in South Korea. In this descriptive phenomenological study, researchers examined the behavior of 16 adolescents. Four themes emerged from examination: Egocentric Relational Violence, Learning Through Observation and Imitation, The Synchronization of Stigma and Aggression, and The Dilemma of Deviance and Habituation. Findings indicated that a confluence of factors impact verbal bullying among adolescents. To prevent verbal bullying, it is necessary to understand the progress of offenders' deviance and develop intervention activities through mental health services. [Journal of Psychosocial Nursing and Mental Health Services, 57(6), 45-51.].
The unpleasant expressions (offensiveness)
always emotionally affect to the human psyches,
and exists in all languages in less or strong
degrees and directly or indirectly. Therefore, this
study aimed to investigate over the changes of
them by corporally-derived data and their
registers, times and genders were the pilot
targets. BNC and COCA Corpora were put for
data collections while the list of previous
insulting words was selected to reuse, especially
the ones with highest frequencies. The results
suggested 4 words damn, shit, fuck and dick had
the highest degrees of uses but those from BNC
were comparatively fewer than the rest.
Moreover, the top four were emerged up to the
different periods of times and contexts while men
used them considerably more often than the
women did.
Objective:
In this narrative review, we summarize relevant literature pertaining to psychosocial risk factors for headache and migraine progression, current behavioral and psychological treatments, and consider promising treatments.
Background:
Headache and migraine are common and associated with significant burden and disability. Current treatments targeting psychosocial risk factors show modest outcomes and do not directly address the impact of early life adversity, including the development of maladaptive emotional processing. An intervention that could address these factors and include components of current evidence-based interventions may lead to improved outcomes.
Methods:
We searched PubMed and Google Scholar for articles through December 2022. Search terms included headache, migraine, psychological interventions, behavioral interventions, cognitive-behavioral therapy, mindfulness, psychiatric comorbidities, adverse childhood experiences, trauma, and emotional processing.
Results:
Trauma and childhood adversity show a correlation with headache and migraine progression. Developmental adversity and trauma interfere with adaptive emotional processing, which may worsen headache and migraine symptoms, while adaptive ways of experiencing emotions are shown to improve symptoms. Current behavioral and psychological interventions, such as cognitive-behavioral and mindfulness therapies, are effective treatments for headache, but they produce small to medium effect sizes and do not directly address the impact of trauma and emotional conflicts-common factors that contribute to chronicity and disability, especially among certain subpopulations of headache patients such as those with migraine. Thus, there exists a gap in current treatment.
Conclusion:
There is a gap in headache and migraine treatment for those patients who have a history of trauma, childhood adversity, and maladaptive emotional processing. We suggest that an integrated psychological treatment that includes components of current evidence-based interventions and addresses gaps by focusing on processing trauma-related emotions may improve chronic and debilitating symptoms.
ABSTRACT
Childhood abuse, neglect and traumas; which a child is punished-rejected-neglected when he
behaves as he is and thus deprived of the sense of security, prevent him from being a child, from
behaving like himself, and causes him to reject himself.Those who have secure attachment, who
have found a secure support, unconditional acceptance and approval of their existence not only
from parents, but also from another member of the family, a family friend, and teachers; can
somehow survive these childhood traumas without severe damage. On the other hand, those
with insecure attachment are at greater risk. Such a client's ability to use safe child skills to repair
attachment trauma, strengthen existing resources and add new resources with the therapist's
nonjudgmental acceptance, to accept the child inside without judgment, will help to eliminate
the feeling of shame caused by the trauma, and to reach his authentic self and increase his selfworth and self-confidence, and will increase his psychological flexibility and help him cope with
problems. In this context, the aim of this study is to teach the client how “safe child skills” in
therapy, in order to be able to contact the inner child and realize his/her needs and meet his/her
needs, especially for those who have had a traumatic childhood, have difficulty in accessing how
they feel, have difficulty in trusting and connecting with others. To summarize, in this study, the
use of safe child skills in psychotherapy will be presented through two different case examples.
Childhood abuse, neglect and traumas; which a child is punished-rejected-neglected when he
behaves as he is and thus deprived of the sense of security, prevent him from being a child, from
behaving like himself, and causes him to reject himself.Those who have secure attachment, who
have found a secure support, unconditional acceptance and approval of their existence not only
from parents, but also from another member of the family, a family friend, and teachers; can
somehow survive these childhood traumas without severe damage. On the other hand, those
with insecure attachment are at greater risk. Such a client's ability to use safe child skills to repair
attachment trauma, strengthen existing resources and add new resources with the therapist's
nonjudgmental acceptance, to accept the child inside without judgment, will help to eliminate
the feeling of shame caused by the trauma, and to reach his authentic self and increase his selfworth and self-confidence, and will increase his psychological flexibility and help him cope with
problems. In this context, the aim of this study is to teach the client how “safe child skills” in
therapy, in order to be able to contact the inner child and realize his/her needs and meet his/her
needs, especially for those who have had a traumatic childhood, have difficulty in accessing how
they feel, have difficulty in trusting and connecting with others. To summarize, in this study, the
use of safe child skills in psychotherapy will be presented through two different case examples.
Detey, S. (2023). Savons-nous vraiment parler ? Du contrat linguistique comme contrat social. Paris : Armand Colin. ISBN : 978-2-200-63634-0, 416 p.
Cet ouvrage explique pourquoi, à l’heure où chacun revendique le droit de dire publiquement tout et n’importe quoi, il nous faut ouvrir nos programmes scolaires et nos débats médiatiques à la question du langage, en lien avec l'éducation civique et scientifique, afin de rationaliser les effets des réseaux sociaux et de la rhétorique mondialisée.
https://www.dunod.com/lettres-et-arts/savons-nous-vraiment-parler-du-contrat-linguistique-comme-contrat-social
Voici en outre ci-dessous 13 questions, parmi d’autres, auxquelles vous chercherez des réponses dans cet ouvrage : merci d’inviter vos amis, vos réseaux ou vos étudiants à en prendre connaissance, et, pour ceux qui en ont les moyens, de les poser sur la table des personnes et des institutions concernées.
1. Pourquoi la distinction entre « bien parler » et « mal parler » peut-elle avoir du sens ou n’en avoir aucun ?
2. Pourquoi l’absence de distinction entre parole publique et parole privée peut-elle nous conduire au désastre ?
3. Pourquoi une vie médiatique sans violence verbale ni cyberharcèlement devrait-elle être possible ?
4. Pourquoi la langue peut-elle constituer un ultime outil d’égalité sociale et devrait par conséquent être préservée des luttes socio-idéologiques ?
5. Pourquoi le pouvoir des journalistes et des éditeurs devrait-il être politiquement réévalué ?
6. Pourquoi des cours de phonétique devraient-ils aider à combattre le racisme et favoriser l’intégration ?
7. Pourquoi les cours de langue maternelle et de langue étrangère devraient-ils être menés en partie conjointement, en particulier dans le traitement de la liberté d’expression ?
8. Pourquoi faut-il des cours obligatoires de linguistique du primaire au supérieur, en lien avec l’éducation civique, scientifique, historique et sexuelle ?
9. Pourquoi l’éducation à la parole concerne-t-elle tout aussi bien les ministères de l’Education nationale et du Numérique que ceux de l’Intérieur, de la Justice, des Affaires étrangères et des Affaires Sociales ?
10. Pourquoi faut-il repenser un Ministère de l’information et de la communication respectueux de la démocratie du XXIe siècle, dont une des missions serait de mettre sur pied un séjour à l’étranger obligatoire pour tous les jeunes de 18 ans ?
11. Pourquoi les outils de traduction automatique risquent-ils de perpétuer l’illusion de la communication internationale ?
12. Pourquoi nos enfants devraient-ils mieux parler que nous ?
13. Pourquoi cet ouvrage s’adresse-t-il aussi bien aux enseignants, aux étudiants, aux stars des médias, aux journalistes et aux grands acteurs de la vie sociale et économique qu’aux citoyens lambdas qui aspirent à un monde meilleur ?
Et sur la base de ces 13 « Pourquoi » se dessinent des « Comment » …
L’ouvrage peut servir de manuel d’introduction à la communication pour tous les cursus, en lettres, en sciences, en SHS et en formation professionnelle.
Sommaire
Parler, une évidence ?
1. La communication : un handicap pour tous.
2. Être reconnu dans le monde : parler bien, parler fort ou parler peu ?
3. La norme : devons-nous tous parler de la même manière ?
4. La variation : pouvons-nous échapper à notre manière de parler ?
5. Du monolingue au polyglotte : apprendre au moins deux langues étrangères
6. Locuteur natif ou locuteur expert ? Devenir professeur de sa propre langue
7. Plurilinguisme et gestion de l’incertitude communicative : mondialisation de l’information et liberté d’expression
8. Du contrat linguistique comme il en est du contrat social : quelles perspectives éducatives ?
9. La communication de l’avenir passera-t-elle encore par la parole ?
Handicap communicatif, contrat linguistique et communication empathique
Annexes : Les dix-huit commandements linguistiques moralisateurs. Pourquoi légiférer sur la parole n’est pas tâche aisée. Vous, comment parlez-vous ?
Références
Présentation éditeur
Nous perdons un temps fou à ne pas être d’accord. Contrairement à ce que l’on imagine, nous ne nous comprenons pas – ou du moins pas suffisamment.
« Parlons plus pour mieux nous comprendre ! », entonnera-t-on. Et pourtant, il suffit de pratiquer une langue étrangère pour que la difficulté de comprendre et d’être compris nous assaille et nous éveille. Par effet retour, on prend la mesure de l’illusion dans laquelle nous bercent les langues que nous pensons maîtriser, à commencer par notre langue maternelle.
Plutôt que de parler plus, n’est-il pas temps de parler moins et de parler mieux, ou différemment ? Mais il en est du contrat linguistique comme du contrat social, du « savoir-parler » comme du savoir-vivre. Et pour savoir parler, les mots et les règles de grammaire ne suffisent pas. Tout particulièrement à l’heure d’internet et de la communication mondialisée, dans laquelle les frontières entre communication privée et publique d’une part, et nationale et internationale d’autre part, sont devenues dangereusement poreuses. Il est donc temps de reprendre le contrôle de nos comportements communicatifs, comme nous l’avons fait à chaque fois que l’innovation technologique nous a permis d’accroitre nos libertés et nos pouvoirs individuels, aujourd’hui internet et réseaux sociaux.
Some philosophers believe that swearing is morally innocent insofar as it is non‐abusive and vulgarities are being used, such as when people exclaim “s**t!” or “f**k!” This article shows this view to be mistaken. I start by arguing that taking offense at non‐abusive vulgar swearing is not irrational, before arguing that, even if it were, such swearing would still not always be justified. The fact that many of us find it hard to overcome profanity‐induced offense, along with the fact that its existence is necessary for swearing to be possible, is sufficient to render even non‐abusive vulgar swearing sometimes wrong. I go on to assess the opposite view, according to which swearing, including non‐abusive vulgar swearing, is never justified, whereby two objections to this activity are addressed. According to the instrumentalization objection, the fact that swearing is possible only if at least some people are sometimes offended by the words that are used means that swearers treat those who are offended by their profanity as mere means. And according to the Ersatz objection, the fact that we can use inoffensive words to raise the emotional content of our speech renders swearing gratuitously offensive. Neither objection is found to be convincing.
Swearing has been shown to reduce the experience of pain in a cold pressor task, and the effect has been suggested to be due to state aggression. In the present experiment, we examined whether producing a taboo gesture (i.e., the American gesture of raising the middle finger) reduces the experience of pain similar to the effect that has been shown for producing a taboo word. 111 participants completed two cold pressor trials in a 2 (Language vs. Gesture) × 2 (Taboo vs. Neutral) mixed design. 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. We found no changes in state aggression or heart rate. These results suggest that the pain-reducing effect of swearing is shared by taboo gesture and that these effects are likely not due to changes in state aggression.
Introduction: Swearing fulfils positive functions including benefitting pain relief and physical strength. Here we present two experiments assessing a possible psychological mechanism, increased state disinhibition, for the effect of swearing on physical strength. Method: Two repeated measures experiments were carried out with sample sizes N=56, and N=118. Both included measures of physical performance assessing, respectively, grip and arm strength, and both included the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART) to measure risky behaviour. Experiment 2, which was pre-registered, additionally assessed flow, emotion including humour, distraction including novelty, self-confidence and anxiety. Results: Experiments 1 and 2 found that repeating a swear word benefitted physical strength and increased risky behaviour, but risky behaviour did not mediate the strength effect. Experiment 2 found that repeating a swear word increased flow, positive emotion, humour and distraction and self-confidence. Humour mediated the effect of swearing on physical strength. Discussion: Consistent effects of swearing on physical strength indicate that this is a reliable effect. Swearing influenced several constructs related to state disinhibition including increased self-confidence. Humour appeared to mediate the effect of swearing on physical strength, consistent with a hot cognitions explanation of swearing-induced state disinhibition. However, as this mediation effect was part of an exploratory analysis, further pre-registered experimental research including validated measures of humour is required.
Chronic pain remains one of the most persistent healthcare challenges in the world. To advance pain treatment, experts have recently introduced research-driven subtypes of chronic pain based on proposed underlying mechanisms. Nociplastic pain (e.g., nonspecific chronic low back or fibromyalgia) is one such subtype which may involve a greater etiologic role for brain plasticity, painful emotions induced by life stress and trauma, and unhealthy emotion regulation. In particular, correlational and behavioral data link anger and the ways anger is regulated with the presence and severity of nociplastic pain. Functional neuroimaging studies also suggest nociplastic pain and healthy anger regulation demonstrate inverse patterns of activity in the medial prefrontal cortex and amygdala; thus, improving anger regulation could normalize activity in these regions. In this Mini-Review, we summarize these findings and propose a unified, biobehavioral model called the Anger, Brain, and Nociplastic Pain (AB-NP) Model, which can be tested in future research and may advance pain care by informing new treatments that address anger, anger regulation, and brain plasticity for nociplastic pain.
Here's a brief summary of my PhD dissertation on the defining properties of Interjections and Onomatopoeias (and it's in English) >> don't forget to select the "read mode".
This study aims to identify the causes of the profanity problem among primary school pupils. It examined primary school teachers working in elementary schools affiliated to the Third Al-Karkh Education Directorate of both genders (male / female) for the academic year 2019/2020. A questionnaire about the causes of the problem of profanity was prepared for this study. The questionnaire in its final form consisted of (32) fields the validity and consistency of which were checked. The researchers used the weighted mean and percentage to extract the results. The results showed that environmental factors can be considered as some the most common causes of the emergence of the problem of profanity. These include factors with which the pupil lives, interacts as well as those causes which influence the pupil and vice versa. Of particular note here is the process of socialisation and the methods used by parents in dealing with children. These also include television programs, as well as mixing with peers, playing in the street, and family members using profanity as a form of interaction between them.
Profanity, derived from the Latin for "not sacred," has long been seen as antithetical to spirituality. Social norms around organized religion, respectability, race, gender, etc. compound this perception. In this article, I examine how the use of profanity in Clinical Pastoral Education can help students experience personal, social, and physical freedom. Association of Clinical Pastoral Education outcomes, demographic data, and a student experience provide support for this assertion.
Bertuccio, R. & Fairchild, K. (2015). Implicit versus explicit attitudes: Feelings about Latinos and illegal immigration. Undergraduate Psychology Review, 3 (1), 47-60.
Cursing in English is quite a sensitive issue, especially among women in Malaysia. This
study aims to provide more insights into the patterns and the perceptions of using
English curse words in their daily communication. The researcher explores the
frequency of swearing in English, the sources of learning English curse words, the
counterparts and also the category of English curse words frequently used. The overall
perception of this phenomenon and the preferences of using English euphemisms are
also taken into consideration. The implementation of quantitative approach in this study
requires the researcher to conduct an online survey towards the female university
students in the selected area. The data was analysed through statistical and thematic
coding to discover the patterns and their perceptions of this issue. This study concludes
that female university students in Malaysia swear in English moderately and view this
phenomenon as moderately bad, from a scale of extremely bad to normal.
Keywords: cursing in English, patterns, sociolinguistics, women’s language,
perceptions
In Study I, the Pain Catastrophizing Scale (PCS) was administered to 425 undergraduates. Analyses yielded a three component solution comprising (a) rumination, (b) magnification, and (c) helplessness. In Study 2, 30 undergraduate participants were classified as catastrophizers (
n = 15) or noncatastrophizers (
n = 15) on the basis of their PCS scores and participated in a cold pressor procedure. Catastrophizers reported significantly more negative pain-related thoughts, greater emotional distress, and greater pain intensity than noncatastrophizers. Study 3 examined the relation between PCS scores, negative pain-related thoughts, and distress in 28 individuals undergoing an aversive electrodiagnostic medical procedure. Catastrophizers reported more negative pain-related thoughts, more emotional distress, and more pain than noncatastrophizers. Study 4 examined the relation between the PCS and measures of depression, trait anxiety, negative affectivity, and fear of pain. Analyses revealed moderate correlations among these measures, but only the PCS contributed significant unique variance to the prediction of pain intensity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Severe aphasia, adult left hemispherectomy, Gilles de la Tourette syndrome (GTS), and other neurological disorders have in common an increased use of swearwords. There are shared linguistic features in common across these language behaviors, as well as important differences. We explore the nature of swearing in normal human communication, and then compare the clinical presentations of selectively preserved, impaired and augmented swearing. These neurolinguistic observations, considered along with related neuroanatomical and neurochemical information, provide the basis for considering the neurobiological foundation of various types of swearing behaviors.
The most commonly cited descriptions of the behavioral characteristics of habituation come from two papers published almost 40 years ago [Groves, P. M., & Thompson, R. F. (1970). Habituation: A dual-process theory. Psychological Review, 77, 419-450; Thompson, R. F., & Spencer, W. A. (1966). Habituation: A model phenomenon for the study of neuronal substrates of behavior. Psychological Review, 73, 16-43]. In August 2007, the authors of this review, who study habituation in a wide range of species and paradigms, met to discuss their work on habituation and to revisit and refine the characteristics of habituation. This review offers a re-evaluation of the characteristics of habituation in light of these discussions. We made substantial changes to only a few of the characteristics, usually to add new information and expand upon the description rather than to substantially alter the original point. One additional characteristic, relating to long-term habituation, was added. This article thus provides a modern summary of the characteristics defining habituation, and can serve as a convenient primer for those whose research involves stimulus repetition.
Stress-induced analgesia (SIA) is a key component of the defensive behavioral "fight-or-flight" response. Although the neural substrates of SIA are incompletely understood, previous studies have implicated the hypocretin/orexin (Hcrt) and nociceptin/orphanin FQ (N/OFQ) peptidergic systems in the regulation of SIA. Using immunohistochemistry in brain tissue from wild-type mice, we identified N/OFQ-containing fibers forming synaptic contacts with Hcrt neurons at both the light and electron microscopic levels. Patch clamp recordings in GFP-tagged mouse Hcrt neurons revealed that N/OFQ hyperpolarized, decreased input resistance, and blocked the firing of action potentials in Hcrt neurons. N/OFQ postsynaptic effects were consistent with opening of a G protein-regulated inwardly rectifying K+ (GIRK) channel. N/OFQ also modulated presynaptic release of GABA and glutamate onto Hcrt neurons in mouse hypothalamic slices. Orexin/ataxin-3 mice, in which the Hcrt neurons degenerate, did not exhibit SIA, although analgesia was induced by i.c.v. administration of Hcrt-1. N/OFQ blocked SIA in wild-type mice, while coadministration of Hcrt-1 overcame N/OFQ inhibition of SIA. These results establish what is, to our knowledge, a novel interaction between the N/OFQ and Hcrt systems in which the corticotropin-releasing factor and N/OFQ systems coordinately modulate the Hcrt neurons to regulate SIA.
Taboo words are defined and sanctioned by institutions of power (e.g., religion, media), and prohibitions are reiterated in child-rearing practices. Native speakers acquire folk knowledge of taboo words, but it lacks the complexity that psychological science requires for an understanding of swearing. Misperceptions persist in psychological science and in society at large about how frequently people swear or what it means when they do. Public recordings of taboo words establish the commonplace occurrence of swearing (ubiquity), although frequency data are not always appreciated in laboratory research. A set of 10 words that has remained stable over the past 20 years accounts for 80% of public swearing. Swearing is positively correlated with extraversion and Type A hostility but negatively correlated with agreeableness, conscientiousness, religiosity, and sexual anxiety. The uniquely human facility for swearing evolved and persists because taboo words can communicate emotion information (anger, frustration) more readily than nontaboo words, allowing speakers to achieve a variety of personal and social goals with them (utility). A neuro-psycho-social framework is offered to unify taboo word research. Suggestions for future research are offered.
© 2009 Association for Psychological Science.
It is unclear whether stably aggressive boys would be characterized by high or low pain sensitivity. Adolescent boys in whom physical aggression, executive functioning, anxiety, and family adversity had been assessed longitudinally formed three groups who differed in stability of physical aggression: stable, unstable, and non-aggressive. Stable aggressives were the least pain sensitive, whereas unstable aggressives were the most pain sensitive. While at low levels of executive functioning pain sensitivity could not be distinguished between the aggressive groups, at high levels unstable aggressives reported even more pain, whereas stable aggressives reported even less pain. Variations in anxiety were associated strongly with pain sensitivity in unstable aggressives. High pain ratings were found in boys who had a moderate level of family adversity, and low pain ratings in boys with low or high adversity. The differences in pain sensitivity between the groups may be motivationally important to the frequency and type of aggression.
Literature is reviewed indicating that greater tendency to manage anger via direct verbal or physical expression (trait anger-out) is associated with increased acute and chronic pain responsiveness. Neuroimaging data are overviewed supporting overlapping neural circuits underlying regulation of both pain and anger, consisting of brain regions including the rostral anterior cingulate cortex, orbitofrontal cortex, anterior insula, amygdala, and periaqueductal gray. These circuits provide a potential neural basis for observed positive associations between anger-out and pain responsiveness. The role of endogenous opioids in modulating activity in these interlinked brain regions is explored, and implications for understanding pain-related effects of anger-out are described. An opioid dysfunction hypothesis is presented in which inadequate endogenous opioid inhibitory activity in these brain regions contributes to links between trait anger-out and pain. A series of studies is presented that supports the opioid dysfunction hypothesis, further suggesting that gender and genetic factors may moderate these effects. Finally, possible implications of interactions between trait anger-out and state behavioral anger expression on endogenous opioid analgesic activity are described.
• Fear, rage and pain, and the pangs of hunger are all primitive experiences which human beings share with the lower animals. These experiences are properly classed as among the most powerful that determine the action of men and beasts. A knowledge of the conditions which attend these experiences, therefore, is of general and fundamental importance in the interpretation of behavior. During the past four years there has been conducted, in the Harvard Physiological Laboratory, a series of investigations concerned with the bodily changes which occur in conjunction with pain, hunger and the major emotions. A group of remarkable alterations in the bodily economy have been discovered. Because these physiological adaptations are interesting both in themselves and in their interpretation, it has seemed worth while to gather together in convenient form the original accounts of the experiments, which have been published in various American medical and physiological journals. I have, however, attempted to arrange the results and discussions in an orderly and consecutive manner, and I have tried also to eliminate or incidentally to explain the technical terms, so that the exposition will be easily understood by any intelligent reader even though not trained in the medical sciences. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
• Fear, rage and pain, and the pangs of hunger are all primitive experiences which human beings share with the lower animals. These experiences are properly classed as among the most powerful that determine the action of men and beasts. A knowledge of the conditions which attend these experiences, therefore, is of general and fundamental importance in the interpretation of behavior. During the past four years there has been conducted, in the Harvard Physiological Laboratory, a series of investigations concerned with the bodily changes which occur in conjunction with pain, hunger and the major emotions. A group of remarkable alterations in the bodily economy have been discovered. Because these physiological adaptations are interesting both in themselves and in their interpretation, it has seemed worth while to gather together in convenient form the original accounts of the experiments, which have been published in various American medical and physiological journals. I have, however, attempted to arrange the results and discussions in an orderly and consecutive manner, and I have tried also to eliminate or incidentally to explain the technical terms, so that the exposition will be easily understood by any intelligent reader even though not trained in the medical sciences. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Unlabelled:
Experimental pain research indicates ethnic differences in pain experience. Most of the cross-cultural pain research studied African Americans and Hispanics with little data available for Asian groups. This study examined differences in pain catastrophizing, pain attitudes, and pain responses between Chinese and European Canadian young adults. Prior to completing a cold-pressor (CP) task, 80 Chinese and 80 European Canadian undergraduate students were administered measures of pain catastrophizing and pain attitudes, including stoicism and cautiousness. Pain threshold, pain tolerance, and pain intensity were measured during the CP task. The Short Form-McGill Pain Questionnaire was administered immediately postimmersion to measure sensory and affective pain. While there was no group difference in pain threshold and pain intensity, Chinese participants displayed lower pain tolerance and reported higher SF-MPQ-Affective than European Canadians. Regarding psychological variables, there was no difference in stoicism and cautiousness between groups, but Chinese participants reported greater pain catastrophizing. Mediational analysis indicated that pain catastrophizing mediated the group differences in SF-MPQ-Affective score. The implications of the findings and future research were discussed.
Perspective:
The study found ethnic differences in cold-pressor responses, in which Chinese undergraduates reported higher levels of pain compared to their Euro-Canadian counterparts. The finding that pain catastrophizing mediated the ethnic difference in SF-MPQ-Affective scores indicated the importance of examining the role of catastrophizing in pain reports from Chinese and Euro-Canadian patients.
Although a common pain response, whether swearing alters individuals' experience of pain has not been investigated. This study investigated whether swearing affects cold-pressor pain tolerance (the ability to withstand immersing the hand in icy water), pain perception and heart rate. In a repeated measures design, pain outcomes were assessed in participants asked to repeat a swear word versus a neutral word. In addition, sex differences and the roles of pain catastrophising, fear of pain and trait anxiety were explored. Swearing increased pain tolerance, increased heart rate and decreased perceived pain compared with not swearing. However, swearing did not increase pain tolerance in males with a tendency to catastrophise. The observed pain-lessening (hypoalgesic) effect may occur because swearing induces a fight-or-flight response and nullifies the link between fear of pain and pain perception.
Two studies assessed whether playing video games would significantly distract participants from painful stimulation via a cold pressor test. In Study 1, participants (8 men, 22 women, M age = 18.5 yr., SD = 1.3) in an action-oriented game condition tolerated pain for a longer time period and reported lower pain intensity ratings than those in a nonaction-oriented game or a nongame control condition. No differences were found on scores of aggressiveness, competitiveness, or prior video game experience, suggesting that these factors play little role. In Study 2, participants (14 men, 13 women, M age = 19.7 yr., SD = 1.3) engaged in six video game conditions (action, fighting, puzzle, sports, arcade, and boxing) and a nongame control condition. Video game play produced an increase in pulse, which was greatest during the action, fighting, sports, and boxing games. Pain tolerance was greatest during the sports and fighting games. Thus, certain games produce greater distraction, which may have implications for the medical field as an adjunct to pain management.
Unlabelled:
Pain-related fear and pain catastrophizing are 2 central psychologic factors in fear-avoidance models. Our previous studies in healthy subjects indicated that pain-related fear, but not pain catastrophizing, was associated with cold pressor pain outcomes. The current study extends previous work by investigating pain-related fear and pain catastrophizing in a group of subjects with shoulder pain, and included concurrent measures of experimental and clinical pain. Fifty nine consecutive subjects seeking operative treatment of shoulder pain were enrolled in this study (24 women, mean age = 50.4, SD = 14.9). Subjects completed validated measures of pain-related fear, pain catastrophizing, and clinical pain intensity and then underwent a cold pressor task to determine experimental pain sensitivity. Multivariate regression models used sex, age, pain-related fear, and pain catastrophizing to predict experimental pain sensitivity and clinical pain intensity. Results indicated that only pain-related fear uniquely contributed to variance in experimental pain sensitivity (beta = -.42, P < .01). In contrast, sex (beta = -.29, P = .02) and pain catastrophizing (beta = .43, P < .01) uniquely contributed to variance in clinical pain intensity. These data provide additional support for application of fear-avoidance models to subjects with shoulder pain. Our results also suggest that pain-related fear and pain catastrophizing may influence different components of the pain experience, providing preliminary support for recent theoretical conceptualizations of the role of pain catastrophizing.
Perspective:
This study provided additional information on how specific psychological variables potentially influence experimental and clinical pain. In this sample of subjects with shoulder pain, we replicated findings from our previous studies involving healthy subjects, as fear of pain was uniquely associated with experimental pain sensitivity. In contrast, pain catastrophizing emerged as the sole psychological variable related to clinical pain intensity.
The changes in cardiovascular response to repeated cold-pressor test were studied in young normotensive and in young hypertensive subjects. The cold stimulus consisted of immersing one foot in cold water (4‡ C) for 60 s. Non-invasive methods were used to record the cardiovascular responses: blood flow of the calf was measured using venous occlusion plethysmography, arterial blood pressure with sphygmomanometery, heart rate with electrocardiography.
The vascular conductance level in the calf was higher in hypertensive subjects than in normotensives. The difference remained throughout the series of 6 daily experiments. In both hypertensive and normotensive groups of subjects some individuals responded to the cold stimulus with vasodilatation in the calf muscles, others with vasoconstriction. In the hypertensives blood flow increased more and habituation was only transient with a strong tendency for the vasodilatory response to recover, while in normotensives habituation was rapid and complete. Vasoconstrictor responses showed no signs of reduction. The blood pressure increases were larger in hypertensives and remained unaltered within the period of repeated tests (6 days). There was not significant difference between the heart rate changes in the two groups of subjects.
It is concluded that the vasculature of the calf shows lower tone and is more labile during the early stage of hypertension. On the basis of evidence found in the literature it is suggested that persistent renal vasoconstriction is the main contributing factor to blood pressure increases in the cold-pressor test. Young hypertensives are unable to habituate this response.
It is unclear whether stably aggressive boys would be characterized by high or low pain sensitivity. Adolescent boys in whom physical aggression, executive functioning, anxiety, and family adversity had been assessed longitudinally formed three groups who differed in stability of physical aggression: stable, unstable, and non-aggressive. Stable aggressives were the least pain sensitive, whereas unstable aggressives were the most pain sensitive. While at low levels of executive functioning pain sensitivity could not be distinguished between the aggressive groups, at high levels unstable aggressives reported even more pain, whereas stable aggressives reported even less pain. Variations in anxiety were associated strongly with pain sensitivity in unstable aggressives. High pain ratings were found in boys who had a moderate level of family adversity, and low pain ratings in boys with low or high adversity. The differences in pain sensitivity between the groups may be motivationally important to the frequency and type of aggression.
Fear and/or anxiety about pain is a useful construct, in both theoretical and clinical terms. This article describes the development and refinement of the Fear of Pain Questionnaire (FPQ), which exists in its most current form as the FPQ-III. Factor analytic refinement resulted in a 30-item FPQ-III which consists of Severe Pain, Minor Pain, and Medical Pain subscales. Internal consistency and test-retest reliability of the FPQ-III were found to be good. Four studies are presented, including normative data for samples of inpatient chronic pain patients, general medical outpatients, and unselected undergraduates. High fear of pain individuals had greater avoidance/escape from a pain-relevant Behavioral Avoidance Test with Video, relative to their low fear counterparts, suggesting predictive validity. Chronic pain patients reported the greatest fear of severe pain. Directions for future research with the FPQ-III are discussed, along with general comments about the relation of fear and anxiety to pain.
Animal studies suggest that fear inhibits pain whereas anxiety enhances it; however it is unclear whether these effects generalize to humans. The present study examined the effects of experimentally induced fear and anxiety on radiant heat pain thresholds. Sixty male and female human subjects were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 emotion induction conditions: (1) fear, induced by exposure to three brief shocks; (2) anxiety, elicited by the threat of shock; (3) neutral, with no intervention. Pain thresholds were tested before and after emotion induction. Results suggest that findings from animal studies extend to humans: fear resulted in decreased pain reactivity, while anxiety led to increased reactivity. Pain rating data indicated that participants used consistent subjective criteria to indicate pain thresholds. Both subjective and physiological indicators (skin conductance level, heart rate) confirmed that the treatment conditions produced the targeted emotional states. These results support the view that emotional states modulate human pain reactivity.
Prior work indicates that exposure to fear-inducing shock inhibits finger-withdrawal to radiant heat in humans (hypoalgesia), whereas anxiety induced by threat of shock enhances reactivity (hyperalgesia; Pain 84 (2000) 65-75). Although finger-withdrawal latencies are thought to reflect changes in pain sensitivity, additional measures of pain are needed to determine whether pain perception is altered. The present study examined the impact of negative affect on visual analog scale (VAS) ratings of fixed duration thermal stimuli. One hundred twenty-seven male and female human subjects were randomly assigned to one of three emotion-induction conditions: (1) negative affect induced by exposure to three brief shocks; (2) negative affect elicited by the threat of shock without presentation; and (3) neutral affect, with no intervention. VAS ratings were tested before and after emotion-induction. Results suggest that both negative affect manipulations reduced pain. Manipulation checks indicated that the emotion-induction treatments induced similar levels of fear but with different arousal levels. Potential mechanisms for affect induced changes in pain are discussed.
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