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Swearing might feel like an instinctive release after a stubbed toe — but new research suggests it can also give your body a measurable edge. Psychologists testing whether profanity changes how we perform physically found that a well-timed swear can increase how long people hold a strenuous position and shift their mood toward action and enjoyment.
How the researchers tested swearing and strength
Psychology teams from Keele University in the UK and the University of Alabama designed two controlled experiments to see whether swearing helps people push harder in a short, intense effort. The key idea: if people unconsciously limit their own effort, a swear might help them relax those internal restraints and “go for it.”
In the first experiment, 88 adults aged 18–65 were recruited on a university campus. Each participant chose two words: a swear they might blurt out after hitting their head and a neutral word they might use to name a table. Then, while maintaining eye contact with an experimenter over Microsoft Teams, they performed a chair push-up — gripping the sides of a chair, lifting their body weight so feet and bottom were off the ground — and held the position as long as possible, up to 60 seconds. During each hold they repeated either their self-selected swear or neutral word, depending on random assignment.
What's your swear-word of choice?
After each trial, participants completed questionnaires designed to measure momentary psychological states linked to disinhibition — items like humor, psychological flow, self-confidence, distraction, and social desirability. The team predicted these measures would be higher when participants repeated swear words.
A second experiment with a separate sample of 94 people replicated the basic task and added measures expected to fall during swearing: bystander apathy, behavioral inhibition, cognitive anxiety, and negative emotion.
What the results showed
Across both experiments, repeating a swear word produced a consistent advantage in physical performance. Participants held the chair push-up longer when they used their swear word compared with the neutral control. The swearing trials also produced higher scores for positive emotion, humor, novelty and reduced distraction — signs that profanity moved people into a more action-oriented, less self-conscious state.
Importantly, the evidence was weaker for one of the researchers’ core hypotheses: that swearing directly reduces behavioral inhibition. While swearing correlated with feelings linked to disinhibition, the studies did not conclusively show it dismantled internal constraints. In short: profanity seems to change how people feel in the moment and how long they can sustain effort, but the precise psychological mechanism requires more study.
Why this matters for exercise and everyday performance
The findings help explain why swearing is so common in sports, exercise and high-intensity moments. Richard Stephens, a psychology researcher involved in the work, has argued that profanity is an inexpensive, immediate tool — “calorie-neutral” and drug-free — people can use to gain a small but meaningful boost when extra effort is needed. For athletes or gym-goers, that could mean pushing through a rep or a hold; for anyone facing a short-lived stressful task, a brief swear might sharpen focus and lower self-consciousness.
There are caveats. The studies tested brief, high-effort tasks under controlled conditions: chair push-ups, short holds, and repeated single-word utterances. How swearing affects longer endurance efforts, complex skill performance, or group settings where social norms matter remains an open question. Context also governs social acceptance — what helps in a solitary workout may hinder performance in a formal team or workplace environment.
Broader implications and next steps for research
Beyond exercise, the research ties into a broader literature on emotion, language, and embodied cognition: simple verbal cues can change arousal, attention and perceived effort. Future work could compare different types of profanity, examine neural or physiological correlates (heart rate, cortisol, brain imaging), and test whether instructed swearing produces the same effect as spontaneous or personally meaningful expletives.
The study appears in American Psychologist, and the authors recommend more trials to pin down whether swearing truly reduces inhibition or instead increases motivation and novelty in ways that indirectly improve performance.
Expert Insight
"Language is a powerful regulator of emotion and action," says Dr. Laura Kim, a psychologist who studies stress and behavior. "A brief, context-appropriate expletive may spike arousal and redirect attention toward the task. But social context matters — what aids one person in private could be counterproductive in a group."
That balance — between private benefit and public cost — will likely shape whether swearing becomes an accepted performance strategy or remains a quirky, situational tool.
Source: sciencealert
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