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July 13th, 2009

Does swearing make you feel better?

Posted by: Julie Mollins

What a relief! A new study from Keele University shows that swearing can lessen the pain of injury.

Volunteers recruited for the study were first asked to put a hand in a tub of icy water for as long as possible and repeat a swear word.

A second run through of the experiment involved volunteers simply using a commonplace word as they dunked a hand in icy water.

When volunteers didn’t swear they were unable to keep a hand in the water for as long as they could when they swore.

From this, the researchers deduced that swearing apparently has a “pain-lessening effect.”

When you get hurt do you swear? Does it make you feel better?