Swearing helps people perform better when peak performance is needed, study finds

Psychological experiments found that repeating a self-selected swear word while doing chair push-ups resulted in better performance compared to repeating a neutral word. Swearing might promote psychological states that allow an individual to maximize effort and overcome internal constraints. The paper was published in American Psychologist.

In many situations where peak performance is needed, people hold themselves back, either consciously or unconsciously. This limits their opportunities for success. For example, people may forego situations where they can express ideas or seize personal or professional opportunities because they fear public speaking. Job applicants may hesitate when negotiating salaries. A person may feel too shy to approach someone they are attracted to, missing an opportunity to establish a desired romantic relationship.

Sometimes people miss opportunities because they believe they are not talented, attractive, educated, or important enough. People also hold back when they overthink possible negative outcomes and underestimate their ability to cope with them. Past criticism, embarrassment, failure, or unstable life experiences can make a person expect that new attempts will end badly.

Social pressure can also stop people from acting, especially when they worry that others will judge, mock, or exclude them. Some people stay in familiar but unsatisfying situations because familiarity feels safer than change. Over time, missed opportunities can accumulate and prevent important developments in life from taking place.

Study author Richard Stephens and his colleagues note that in situations where people are holding themselves back, a psychological boost that leads to a more “disinhibited” psychological state might produce more favorable outcomes. For example, a recent study showed that grunting enhances tennis players’ racquet power by 19-26%. The researchers proposed that swearing may also counteract tendencies to hold back and, thereby, improve physical performance.

They conducted two experiments to test this. Participants in the first experiment were 88 adults recruited from the study authors’ university campus community. The study authors asked them to perform chair push-ups in two different conditions: once while repeating a swear word of their choice, and once while repeating a neutral word.

The chair push-up task required participants to sit on a sturdy chair and place their hands under their thighs at a 45-degree angle, with their fingers pointing inward. They would then lift their feet while straightening their arms to support their body weight on their hands for as long as possible (up to a maximum safety limit of 60 seconds). While doing the push-ups, participants were asked to repeat their chosen word every two seconds. Study participants also completed assessments measuring their psychological “flow,” how humorous they found the vocalizations to be, their self-confidence, social desirability, and how distracting they found repeating the word to be.

The second experiment involved 94 participants recruited in the same way as Experiment 1. The overall design was the same, with the addition that participants repeated their assigned word for 20 seconds prior to the push-up task, as well as during the task. Additionally, this experiment included measures of bystander apathy (ratings of how likely they would be to help another person in various scenarios), state disinhibition (the State BIS/BAS scale), and somatic and cognitive anxiety. Participants also rated the novelty of the swear and neutral words they used.

The results of the first experiment showed that chair push-up hold times were longer when participants were repeating the swear word. In this condition, participants also experienced increased psychological flow and distraction. Ratings of humor and scores of perceived freedom from constraints were also higher.

Statistical analyses indicated that freedom from constraints and psychological flow might mediate (explain) the link between swearing and enhanced physical performance. Psychological flow is a highly focused and enjoyable state in which a person becomes fully absorbed in an activity that is challenging but manageable.

The results of the second experiment confirmed the previous findings: chair push-up performance improved in the condition where participants were swearing. Swearing also resulted in greater positive emotions, distraction, and the swear word was perceived as more novel than the neutral word. Unexpectedly, using the swear word seems to have also resulted in higher levels of cognitive anxiety.

Because the individual mediation analyses in both experiments were somewhat mixed and statistically underpowered, the researchers combined the data from both experiments with a third, previously conducted study. Analyzing this aggregated dataset of 300 participants confirmed the researchers’ core theory: swearing reliably improved physical performance by increasing psychological flow, enhancing self-confidence, and increasing distraction (which prevents the brain from focusing on pain or fatigue).

“These findings suggest that swearing promotes psychological states conducive to maximizing effort and overcoming internal constraints. These effects have potential implications for athletic performance, rehabilitation, and contexts requiring courage or assertiveness. As such, swearing may represent a low-cost, widely accessible psychological intervention to help individuals ‘not hold back’ when peak performance is needed,” the study authors concluded.

The study contributes to the scientific understanding of the role swearing plays in human lives. However, participants were most likely aware of what effects the study authors expected. It is unlikely that they did not realize that the study authors expected swearing to result in improved performance. This could have produced the placebo effect or the Hawthorne effect, biasing the results. The Hawthorne effect is the tendency for people to change their behavior (e.g., put in more effort) simply because they know they are being observed and are aware of the likely expectations of the observers.

The paper, “‘Don’t Hold Back’: Swearing Improves Strength Through State Disinhibition,” was authored by Richard Stephens, Harry Dowber, Christopher Richardson, and Nicholas B. Washmuth.