Everyone seems to know a certain type of person. Perhaps it’s an aunt who uses profanity during Thanksgiving dinner without anyone noticing. Perhaps it’s the coworker who casually uses profanity during a meeting and manages to make everyone laugh rather than cringe.
We’ve been told for a long time that these people are careless thinkers who use foul language because they can’t think of anything better. As it happens, that assumption might have been incorrect all along.
| Topic | The Curse Word Fluency Test |
|---|---|
| Field of Study | Cognitive psychology, psycholinguistics, verbal fluency |
| Original Researchers | Kristin Jay (Marist College) and Timothy Jay (Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts) |
| Study Title | “Taboo word fluency and knowledge of slurs and general pronouns” |
| Year Published | 2015 |
| Journal | Language Sciences |
| Core Method | Comparing taboo word generation with the FAS verbal fluency task |
| Sample Sizes | 43 participants (Experiment 1), 49 participants (Experiment 2) |
| Key Finding | Taboo fluency positively correlates with overall verbal fluency |
| Related Research | Pain tolerance study by Dr. Richard Stephens, Keele University |
| Public Reach | Widely covered by Medical News Today and Cleveland Clinic |
| Practical Use | Pain relief, emotional expression, creative communication |
Kristin and Timothy Jay conducted a study in 2015 that subtly dismantled that outdated stereotype. Volunteers were asked to list as many profanity words as they could in sixty seconds, and then they were asked to do the same with animal names. This is a common trick used by psychologists to determine how extensive a person’s vocabulary is. The simplicity of the results was almost cheeky. The individuals who came up with the longest lists of profanity terms also came up with the longest lists of all other words. It appears that fluency is unaffected by the politeness of the words.
That discovery has a satisfying, even somewhat vindicating quality. Swearing has been viewed for decades as a verbal shrug, the language equivalent of giving up. Children are reprimanded by their parents for it. Instructors annotate it. One misplaced syllable can cause job interviews to fall apart. However, a study suggests that the person riding through profanity at a red light may have a more comprehensive mental dictionary than the person sitting quietly next to them.
Naturally, it’s best to take your time before proclaiming foul-mouthed individuals to be the new intellectuals. When questioned about such studies, health psychologist Grace Tworek is said to hear the words of her undergraduate statistics professor: correlation does not equate to causation. Ice cream and shark attacks are a classic example; neither causes the other, but both increase in the summer. Although a large vocabulary may be a sign of intelligence, the two are not the same. Anyone who has ever watched a TED Talk knows that being smart and sounding smart can be quite different.
Nevertheless, the study continues to reveal intriguing trends. Three different studies conducted in 2017 found a connection between profanity and honesty. It has been linked to creativity, which, if you’ve ever seen a comedian work a room, kind of makes sense. Curses are frequently held onto with stubborn precision by stroke patients with aphasia, who lose much of their language. It’s almost as if those words reside deeper in the brain than polite ones.
And there’s the suffering. Keele University researchers asked volunteers to repeat either a neutral word or a profanity while submerging their hands in ice water. The swearers persisted longer. Their heart rates increased. Adrenaline, fight-or-flight response, and the release of a tiny chemical mercy when the body needed it all clicked into place physiologically. According to the lead researcher, he had the idea after witnessing his wife give birth. Her language didn’t bother the midwives in the slightest. They had frequently heard worse.
It’s difficult to ignore how much of this research feels like unspoken consent. Giving someone permission to stop pretending to swear is immoral. Permission to acknowledge that language is rarely as neat as grammar teachers would like in all its complexity. The researchers themselves are cautious because the science isn’t perfect. However, a small truth appears to be taking hold somewhere between the labor wards and the lab results. It appears that the mouth may be more knowledgeable than we’ve been acknowledging.
