A strong word of several letters increases the pain threshold by 32 percent.
You are sleepily wandering barefoot through your apartment, and suddenly your big toe brushes against the leg of the sofa with full swing. At this moment, you feel that the phrase "sparks from the eyes" is not a metaphor, but a very real life. And hissing with pain, you try to hold back the obscene curse. In vain, it turns out, you are trying: psychologists from the University of Keele (Germany) have scientifically proved with the help of research that an obscene word that escapes at this moment will help you to survive this pain.
Ice
Psychologist Richard Stevenson has researched the effect of cursing on pain threshold before. But this time he managed to experimentally prove that not just an emotional cry has an analgesic effect, but that a dirty curse.
The study involved 92 people. They had to put their hands in the ice and hold them there for a long time, repeating one of four curses every three seconds. The first of them is a really dirty word with the letter "f" (in English the choice of obscene words is meager, but you have to be content with what you have). Three more curses were just invented by the experimenters, and were not taboo. One of them was simply emotional, the second had a humorous connotation, the third was neutral.
The experimenters tried to evaluate how humor helps to endure icy torture, and how the same can be done with the help of dirty curses. The results exceeded the wildest expectations. The strong word raised the pain threshold by 32% and increased pain tolerance by 33%. The curses, which are humorous and simply emotional, do not even have such an effect.
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To crush pain with emotion
This study complemented a number of others that Richard Stevenson conducted at Keele University - a psychologist and colleagues have been studying how swearing affects the ability to endure pain for more than a decade, and, apparently, is not going to stop. So far, scientists have only managed to prove only the anesthetic effect of strong words itself. But they cannot fully explain why the mat helps us to endure pain.
According to one of the theories, everything happens due to the fact that from childhood we are convinced that swearing is bad, and swearing literally cuts our ears. But swearing dirty at the moment of trauma, we "crush" the pain with those emotions that taboo words evoke in us.
According to another theory, the brain is simply distracted by words that are not quite usual for it in everyday life. But if this were really so, then the brain could easily be distracted by humorous curses. And judging by the results of the last experiment, this did not happen. So the first theory seems to be more reliable.
Protect obscene words for a rainy day
By the way, she has several more confirmations. For example, all the same scientists from the University of Keele proved that curse anesthesia works in different countries - both in England and in Japan. It would be nice to get scientific confirmation for Russia, but so far there is no such data.
But there is one more scientific observation. The more often you swear in everyday life, the less analgesic effect the mat has in extreme situations. So it makes sense to use foul language as little as possible in everyday life. Better to save these words for the moment when you really need them.
ANDREY VDOVIN