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By Melissa Fleur Afshar
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Swearing has long been associated with letting off steam, but new research published in the American Psychological Association proves that it may have tangible benefits.
Psychologist Richard Stephens of Britain's Keele University and his colleagues discovered that when people swear, they perform better physically and are able to put up with challenging and strenuous physical acts for longer.
This includes, for instance, how long an individual can keep their hand under ice cold water, or how long they can keep their body in a plank position while attempting a push up.
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“In many situations, people hold themselves back—consciously or unconsciously—from using their full strength,” Stephens said in a statement. “Swearing is an easily available way to help yourself feel focused, confident and less distracted, and ‘go for it’ a little more.
“That is now a well replicated, reliable finding...But the question is, how is swearing helping us? What's the psychological mechanism?”
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To answer this question, the researches undertook two experiments. First, they divided participants up between those who would and would not swear during a physical challenge to better understand how the power of blurting out a swear word could help them through.
With a total of 192 study participants, Stephens asked each test group to repeat either a swear word of their choice, or a neutral word once every two seconds, while attempting a chair pushup.
After completing the exercise, participants answered questions about how mentally strong they felt during the task.
They had to self-report how confident they felt, how positive they felt and how funny they found the situation–among other questions linked to disinhibition**–**for the study team.
Swearing Is ****** Good, Actually
The team had thought that the extra boost swearing provided could be down to pushing people into a disinhibited state of mind, meaning their brain would be temporarily primed to pursue a risk or challenge with less thought to the pain or negative consequence associated with it.
“By swearing, we throw off social constraint and allow ourselves to push harder in different situations,” Stephens said.
The participants' results confirmed that those who swore during the challenge were able to support their body weight for much longer than those who only uttered neutral words.
The researchers analyzed their responses and concluded that the swearing increased the participants’ reports of psychological flow, distraction and self-confidence, all key factors that would have made the tough exercise more bearable.
“These findings help explain why swearing is so commonplace,” Stephens said. “Swearing is literally a calorie neutral, drug free, low cost, readily available tool at our disposal for when we need a boost in performance.”
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Reference
Stephens, R., Dowber, H., Richardson, C., & Washmuth, N. (2025). Don’t hold back: Swearing improves strength through state disinhibition. American Psychologist. https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0001650
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