The Science of Swearing

07/25/2025

Swearing is one of those things that carries a ton of weight in our world. Whether we've been chastised by parents, grandparents, teachers, etc. It always comes with a visceral reaction. However, most of us find it to be cathartic, fun, a manifestation of how we're feeling in a moment, or just part of our day to day. Interestingly enough, the science backs the use of swearing, as opposed to the generalized demonization of the act.

In a serious of papers written over the last few years that investigated swearing, it was found that there might be a connection to how honest people might be and the amount of swearing they do regularly. 3 studies were conducted, the first using the Short form Eysenck Lie Scale, the original developed in 1985 and still used to this day. The lie scale asks questions like "Are all your habits good and healthy?" Or "if you say you'll do something, do you always keep your promise no matter how inconvenient?". Positive answers are considered unrealistic, and the results are reversed to get the actual results.It was noted that when people were asked about the reasons for using profanity, they were more likely to use them to express negative emotions, out of habit, as an expression of themselves, or expressing their honest feelings. Negative emotions rated the highest in the rankings, and using profanity to insult or intimidate someone ranked the lowest

Episode: File 0152: Swearing in Eden

Release Date: July 25 2025

Researched and presented by Nathan

The same paper took this a step farther and gathered a larger sample set through Facebook posts. Considering how popular Facebook is as a place for social connection and just oversharing, this makes sense. It's also fun to note that using language has been happening since the early 1900s to analyze people's psyches with one Mr. Freud and slips of the tongue. There is also the idea that the unconscious can manifest in language, as theorized by Jacque Lacan in the 60s. Taking a sample of 150k+ users through an app called mypersonality and allowing them to opt-in to have their data tracked and analyzed the team narrowed the group down to just under half, at around 73k users who had 50 status updates and more than 30 friends.

When the data was compiled, it was eventually parsed through a program called Linguistics Inquiry and Word Count. The software using provided swearing and conversational logic determined that there was a positive correlation between the use of swears and the honesty in the posts that were being analyzed. Only about 10% of the population seemed to not use swears at all in their posts. The majority of users used some kind of profanity.

The last step of this whole paper is the social outlook. It took a list of state integrity results and profanity use, and compared them. Interestingly, the states with the highest integrity score also lined up with the highest profanity use. Especially these days, integrity is a hard thing to really pin point, but at an overall societal level of "I think my state has a high level of integrity" and "We swear a whole fucking lot" it doesn't seem like its negatively impacting the conversation on how honest these folks are. If anything, we get to see a raw interpretation of what is happening in their heads.

Bringing all of these pieces together seems to pain the general picture that individually, and socially, profanity use seems to indicate honesty and integrity. Something we never would have been taught as kids, and still to this day, information that we'd maybe not be encouraged to seek out.

Another study called "swearing as a response to pain: assessing hypoalgesic effects of novel swear words" wanted to determine how it was that swearing helped in times of pain or distress. The test took a sample of 100 participants, and a number of days had them repeat the experiment. They would enter a room, ask questions about what they were supposed to do, complete a Pain Catastrophizing questionnaire which determines a person's thoughts on the thing they are going to be doing. Like I think it's going to be super unbearable, like breaking a leg. Then they'd complete a fear of pain questionnaire. The test was simple, they would have a neutral word like "dog". They would submerge their hand in room temperature water, then after a time in cold water until it was absolutely unbearable, while repeating the word for the day.

The Science of Swearing

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