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There was a problem signing you up. Psychology Scientists should report results with intellectual humility. What will we remember? By Aimee Cunningham October 27, Psychology Nostalgia may have bona fide benefits in hard times, like the pandemic By Sujata Gupta October 12, Simply because people who tend to swear also tend not to care about what others think about them so therefore they have less of reason to tell white lies. Having incited such violence personally, using utterances primarily constructed with swear words, and having witnessed the same in close proximity on more occasions than I am proud to admit, it strikes me as though the research may have had biases that tainted the results.
Swearing at Disney world be expected to result in fewer negative outcomes than f-bombs tossed strategically at a bar, a ballgame, or family reunion. For as long as I remember, I have considered that folks who use swearwords had not developed sufficient vocabulary to say what they had in mind.
This was an article clearly describing explorations into the social mechanics of the use of profanity and it consequences, with what was obviously an exhortation for more investigation into the phenomenon, not liberal propaganda note how this word is spelled correctly. All that, without a single profanity. Terrific article. Needs expansion. Try to ignore the trolls. Leave those clodhoppers to me. Thanks, James. Have just read the article today and the comments. Keep fighting the good fight against the trolls.
You are guilty of the same logical fallacy. I totally disagree with this finding, if it really is a finding. Half the time the person swearing is swearing because they are covering up a lie, or trying to prove a point that is unrealistic.
I notice that people tend to swear just to relieve anxiety and stress. Believe me, my daughter swears like a sailor and so did one of my sisters.
To heck with Behavioral Studies. I spent 45 years in engineering on the shop floor where swearing was the norm, I never got used to it. I compared it to picking your nose in public, i.
It will probably become socially unacceptable though time. As well as the example above, if the words were substituted with a loud hand clap, I think that would have a similar effect.
As these two words are between 3 and 4 times older than the US they clearly fulfil some type of linguistic need, which must be worthy of a level of attention above the tut-tuttery and value judgements of some of the posters here.
This was apparently a commonly used street name in medieval England. Apparently, so named because of the prostitution which was rife. This name was actively used until Victorian times when use of what they saw as obscene language came to be frowned upon in polite society — the source of much of our current attitudes towards swearing, not to mention their legacy of sexual hypocrisy which was partially responsible for this stance on linguistic mores.
There were at least 3 streets of this name in London, one of which was euphemistically renamed as Threadneedle Street — now the location of the Bank of England. More research on this rich and interesting linguistic heritage and the role that it seems to have played in human history would seem to be more than justified.
According to HBO dramas, ancient Rome and the American frontier West were scenes of far more potty-mouth than contemporary society. SIL strode upstairs and read the three women, the riot act.
If my SIL has a rather irrational approach to a famly member getting easily and emotionally reactive by swearing, then pehaps it is SHE who needs he counseling. At least IMHO.
I do have bipolar disorder so there might be some impulse control issues. I am working towards finishing my M. I promise you there are plenty of intelligent people who swear on a regular basis.
It is systematic. Not impulsive. It is not speculation. It is just like you learned in school—do some research on the topic you are targeting, forming a hypothesis, designing an experiment to test that hypothesis, then doing it and finally analyzing the data, drawing a conclusion and writing up your findings.
So FairBairn— you say people who swear when they are hurt are babies. The swearing helps bear the pain. Remember the part where the author mentioned that children start this fairly young? Not liking swearing does not make it untrue that there is a correlation between wearing and honesty. Have you no understanding at all of the concept of science, or of its methodology? I never used to swear. I have always leaned way to far on the soft heart scale, far to passive when i believe you need to balance between a harder heart, and softer one, somewhere in the middle.
I never have to worry about the balancing act because my tendencies for compassion, and a soft heart i dont think i can lose , so i just try to be as hard as i can , and the balance takes care of itself. I know exactly why I swear. I swear because it is the only way I can find, and feel the aggression I need to meet the aggression that life throws at me.
I not talking about people Im talking about the thing that you wake up to every morning trying to bring you down. Swearin has really made a difference in my aggression of spirit. You have to be harder then life or life will break you. She told me that she has noticed me starting to cuss recently and asked me why.
She also told me, however, that she, in order to determine the continued results of her own study, would have to keep spying, on not only me but also my own husband. I guess there must be more rationale behind the use of profanity in language…. It would be interesting to see more studies about the use of profanity.
Interesting article, but in my opinion it is not always a good approach to omit certain findings from similar scientific studies done from a different area of specialization, as they can lend credence to the psychological study done here.
Neurolinguistics, for example, could give some useful background on just why it is that aphasics swear more prolifically than other psychosociological groups. A nurse was bringing hot coffee to a patient in the hospital where we worked; he had had a severe stroke and was unable to speak at all. That incident opened up an area of study in neurolinguistics that has helped many patients, mute for whatever medical reasons, to relearn how to produce speech by repurposing the pathways the brain normally reserves for swearing.
The original patient was taught to speak again after a prolonged period of no doubt frustrated silence, using those neuropathways… His family was beyond grateful and he himself was thrilled to no end. To get back to my original point, what I believe is that overspecialization in a given area of science can sometimes put the blinders on, even to the extent of reinventing the wheel sometimes. Better to cull from several areas of study, to round out your psychological findings and to give them a broader context.
And by the way, the F word came to us from the Latin form, probably through the Norman rule of England for over years. But the description provided by 2manyprojex definitely has a ring of truth to it see the March, comment above. I love this stuff! Was this a rhetorical question raised for effect to draw attention to the fact the disconnect certainly seems to exist? This is an interesting question that exceedingly relevant in politics. Why such a large disconnect between the folk psychologies of average American communities and the formal communities of the softer sciences known as psychology and sociology?
The subject of this article is interesting, as are some of the questions. After obscene gestures and racial epithets, swearing is likely the biggest precursor no pun intended to violence. Do all people swear? In my experience yes, although frequency varies greatly from person to person. There are exceptions of course — like Tourette Syndrome. Kudos to the people whose entitled moral ground makes them think they know more and better than a Behavioral Science PhD.
Do they really think the world revolves around their own moral values? As for the article. Well written and informative, as much as should be. I would be interested to know how the research progresses. Reference anger to infantile expression shows a lack of connection to our language. I do not choose to revert to anal attachment to feces, when I am frustrated.
Likewise, I do not choose to use a word for intercourse, inviting people who I do not even like to intercourse. That sex and hatred are so intertwined speaks volumes of our inability to differentiate between the two.
To reference a woman as a female breeding dog and then teach her to be proud to insult herself, defies all logic. I could get more into profanities, if they made more sense, raising themselves out of poop, piss, sex, into words that make logical sense. Well, Mac your remarks were hilariously forthright and candidly serious. Your colorful discourse was quite amusing to me, although you appear to be quite sincere with no intention of being comical.
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