\n<\/p>\n
It may not be in keeping with the festive spirit, but if you find yourself dropping the F-word while wrestling a Christmas tree up a flight of stairs, scientists say you could be on to something. A study has found that swearing can boost physical performance by lowering inhibitions and pushing the brain into a \u201cflow state\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn many situations, people hold themselves back \u2013 consciously or unconsciously \u2013 from using their full strength,\u201d said Dr Richard Stephens, a psychologist at Keele University who led the research. \u201cSwearing is an easily available way to help yourself feel focused, confident and less distracted, and go for it a little more.\u201d<\/p>\n
Previous research found that swearing increases strength and pain tolerance in tests that involved participants repeating swearwords while pushing themselves to the limit on an exercise bike or holding their hand in icy water. Initially the researchers hypothesised that swearing riled people up into a \u201cfight or flight\u201d state, but they did not find any corroborating evidence for this, such as an increased heart rate.<\/p>\n
Instead, the latest research suggests that swearing triggers a state of disinhibition. \u201cBy swearing, we throw off social constraint and allow ourselves to push harder,\u201d said Stephens.<\/p>\n
To test this, the researchers conducted two experiments with 192 participants. In each, they asked participants to repeat either an expletive of their choice, or a neutral word, every two seconds while doing a chair pushup. After completing the chair pushup challenge, participants answered questions about their mental state during the task.<\/p>\n
Their answers suggested that swearing boosted self-confidence, improved psychological \u201cflow\u201d and distracted them from the task at hand \u2013 all important aspects of disinhibition. Confirming earlier research, the researchers found that swearing led to an 11% increase in the length of time people could maintain a chair pushup.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese findings help explain why swearing is so commonplace,\u201d said Stephens. \u201cSwearing is literally a calorie neutral, drug free, low cost, readily available tool at our disposal for when we need a boost in performance.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stephens said the power of swearwords was likely to be linked to their taboo nature. His team is now investigating whether more offensive swearwords produce more impressive physical gains in a \u201cdose-response\u201d trial that will test the length of time people can tolerate holding their hand in icy water while saying either mild or strong swearwords.<\/p>\n
The team is also exploring whether boosts in self-confidence from swearing could help in other contexts, such as public speaking or making a romantic approach.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are lots of situations where hesitancy might be to our detriment,\u201d said Stephens. \u201cYou could go into a quiet room, go for it swearing for a minute and then go out and give your talk. I bet people do it already.\u201d<\/p>\n
However, he cautioned that swearing was not an entirely risk-free strategy. \u201cYou\u2019re never quite sure when you use a swearword how it\u2019s going to land,\u201d he said. \u201cYou have to know your audience and who is around. You could land yourself in hot water if you swear inappropriately.\u201d<\/p>\n
The findings are published in the journal American Psychologist<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It may not be in keeping with the festive spirit, but if you find yourself dropping the F-word while wrestling a Christmas tree up a flight of stairs, scientists say you could be on to something. A study has found that swearing can boost physical performance by lowering inhibitions and pushing the brain into a<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38053,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[650,1326,189,1562,20922,4452,2493,2366,188,15546],"class_list":{"0":"post-38052","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-boost","9":"tag-dont","10":"tag-finds","11":"tag-hold","12":"tag-inhibitions","13":"tag-lowering","14":"tag-performance","15":"tag-psychology","16":"tag-study","17":"tag-swearing"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38052","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38052"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38052\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/38053"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}