Scientists find a connection between abuse and honesty

Abuse has long been associated with anger and rudeness, but profanity can have a different, more positive connotation. Psychologists have found that people who often curse everything are more honest. Research by scientists from four countries around the world has shown that people who use profanity are less likely to be associated with lies and deception.

In most social conditions, the use of obscene language is considered inappropriate and unacceptable. This often refers to a language that contains sexual treatment, blasphemous and other vulgar terms. Usually they are associated with the expression of such emotions as anger, disappointment or surprise. In some cases, abuse is used to entertain and conquer an audience.
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Interest in understanding the psychological roots of using profanity dates back to the beginning of the 20th century, but all studies on this topic are scattered and scattered in various scientific fields. Only recently, some researchers are trying to combine the findings of scientists into a single system.

The controversial attitude towards swearing and its social impact has changed over the decades. To understand this, it is enough to refer to the history of cinema. So the first sound film, which sounded the abuse, was the cult film "Gone With the Wind." The expression “Damn Yankees” (“damn Yankees”) is played for the first time in the estate “Twelve Oaks” by Scarlett O'Hara, whose role was played by Vivien Leigh. However, the cult phrase, which later received recognition from the American Institute of Cinematography, was the phrase by the hero Clark Gable “Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn” (“Honestly, my dear, I don't give a damn”), which took the first line in the rating famous quotes from American films for 100 years according to AFI . " Today, foreign films, TV shows and books are full of swear words and, for the most part, we have become more tolerant of them. In the meantime, for two and a half years, a law has been in force in Russia to ban obscene language on television and radio, film distribution and cultural events, which entered into force on July 1, 2014.


Since deception and bad language are considered deviant linguistic forms, they are often viewed as evidence of low moral principles. On the other hand, abuse can be positively associated with honesty. She is often used to express "unfiltered" feelings and sincerity. As an example, researchers cite US President Donald Trump, who used swear words in some of his speeches during last year's election campaign. Many believed that his performances were more sincere than those of his rivals.

Controlled use of profanity often helps to convey their view of the world or internal state, but with no less eagerness is used to insult someone. Speech, in which there are swear words, has a stronger influence on people than the speech, devoid of them.

Dr. David Stillwell, a teacher of big data analytics at the University of Cambridge and co-author of the study, notes that the relationship between swearing and dishonesty is rather tricky. The abuse is often inappropriate, but it can also be an indication that someone tells you their honest opinion. The interlocutor, who does not filter his speech, does not do this with his views.

An international team of scientists from the Netherlands, Great Britain, USA and Hong Kong set itself to find out the opinion of people about such expressions in a series of questionnaires that included interactions with users of social networks.

In the first questionnaire, 276 participants were offered to list the most frequently used and favorite curses. Scientists also asked to assess the reasons for which they use these words, and then measured the level of honesty using the scale of lies from the personal questionnaire Eysenk . This scale is one of the most common indicators for assessing individual differences in a lie, when respondents want their answers to be socially acceptable. The test results showed that those who wrote a greater number of expletives were less prone to lying.

By giving the experiment participants the opportunity to freely swear, the scientists expected that daily use and the pleasure of profanity would somehow affect the total number of written words. They also found out that the most popular reasons for using expletives are the expression of negative emotions, habit, and self-expression. In addition, participants noted that they were unpleasantly expressed in those moments when they were more honest in talking about their feelings or when they were struggling with negative emotions. On the last lines in this ranking, the reasons for using curses turned out to be insulting others and intimidation.

The second part of the study consisted in collecting data from 74,000 Facebook users and their linguistic analysis of their statuses in order to measure the number of used words in social networks.

To determine the level of honesty, researchers used the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count program, which allows you to get the numeric values ​​of text parameters - the percentage of words of certain grammatical, lexical and semantic categories of the total number of words in the text. In 2003, Scientists Newman, Pennebaker, Berry, and Richards concluded that liars use fewer first and third person pronouns and negative particles. Instead, they often use verbs of movement and negative expressions.

The researchers explained this situation by the fact that dishonest people consciously try to “disown” from a lie and therefore do not attribute it to themselves, preferring to use more abstract words when referring to others. Based on this study, the international group suggested that those Facebook users who swear more often will use exactly these language patterns.

From the responses of users, it was possible to distinguish differences in points of view on the use of expletives and expressions that exist between different geographic areas. For example, in the northeastern states (Connecticut, Delaware, New Jersey, and New York), people are more honest about their curses than people in the South of South Carolina, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Mississippi.

Scientific work published in Sage Journals January 15, 2017
DOI: 10.1177 / 1948550616681055