It’s better to say it. Bad words would have a positive impact on your emotional but also physical state, as well as on your relationships with others. At least that is what a study carried out by British and Swedish researchers and published in the Lingua magazine in October, taken up by Ouest-France, says.
According to the scientists, bad words, due to their taboo nature, would activate specific areas of the brain, such as those associated with memory and emotions, also mobilized during stressful or threatening situations. This is one of the reasons why we tend to memorize them well and that is often what people who suffer from impaired cognitive abilities remember best.
Externalize your emotions, relieve pain…
Cursing most often occurs in a context where people feel negative emotions. When pronouncing them, the idea is above all to externalize this discomfort, either to oneself or to communicate with other people.
“The swear words are experienced by the speakers themselves as possessing an emotional force, which is not shared by other forms of language, and which makes them conducive to the expression of strong emotions,” the scientists explain.
But swearing doesn’t just release emotional pressure to improve your mental state: it also helps reduce pain. Studying situations in which two groups of people experienced pain but only one of them was allowed to swear, the researchers noticed that members of the group who could swear took longer to communicate their feeling of pain and felt it less strongly.
In addition to reducing pain, insults can even make the people who utter them “stronger”: “Muscular performance (in terms of strength and power) for physical exercise tasks increases when participants repeat a word rude compared to a neutral word,” writes the scientist.
Positive influence on social interactions.
If it demonstrates benefits for the health and mental and physical state of individuals, the utterance of oaths is also of interest in a social context. We do not swear, in general, next to anyone but in the company of relatives. Saying a bad word in the company of someone is thus demonstrating that we feel comfortable with that person, that we have reduced the “social distance” that separates us from them, according to scientists.
This role of social catalyst is also verified in group situations where swearing, when it is not used to hurt one or more members, is a means of expressing attachment and loyalty to the group, by placing oneself in a more intimate position than usual. is adopted in society.
Finally, from the point of view of communication, the use of profanity allows you to mobilize your audience in two ways: first, by arousing their attention because profanity can allow you to punctuate a speech, remobilize during a long speech and thus stimulate memory of the listeners. The swearer may also be perceived as more credible and therefore prove to be more persuasive, especially in writing, giving the impression of greater authenticity, especially in the political context. Be careful, however, because excessive use of profanity can also lead to discrediting the speaker, particularly in a professional context.
Source: BFM TV
