Word: stephension
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"Swearing increases your pain tolerance," says Richard Stephens, a psychologist and lead author of the study, which was published this week in the journal NeuroReport. Although the experiment's initial hypothesis was inspired by anecdotal evidence from some pain researchers that swearing was actually a maladaptive behavior that served only...
It was an everyday incident in his backyard that first piqued Stephens' fascination with cursing. While building a shed in his garden, he accidentally hammered his little finger. "I whacked my hand really, really hard," he says, "and while it was throbbing, I swore a bit." Being a psychologist, of...
It may be that swearing serves as an alarm bell, triggering the body's fight-or-flight response, as Stephens postulates in the study. He and his colleagues found that when study participants used expletives, their heart rates were consistently higher than when they were repeating non-obscene control words...
But before you go yelling four-letter words at every turn, consider this: in Stephens' study, swearing reduced the perception of pain more strongly in women than in men. That may be because in daily life "men swear more than women," says Pinker, which could have the unfortunate side effect...
This is the 15th novel in the Stephanie Plum series. Have you ever felt that the quality of your stories was declining? Dodie Stephens, OCALA, FLA.