Swearing
Swearing. meo from Pexels

Using cuss words might be more beneficial and might be a sign of something good, according to science. Numerous studies found that using foul language or swearing is actually advantageous.

Several studies found that using taboo words may be a sign of intelligence, honesty, and creativity. Some studies even claim that swearing can be a way to withstand pain.

Studies have also shown that swearing might be a sign of superior superiority, according to a CNN article. Timothy Jay, professor emeritus of psychology at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, said that the advantages of swearing are many. Jay has studied swearing for more than 40 years.

"The benefits of swearing have just emerged in the last two decades, as a result of a lot of research on brain and emotion, along with much better technology to study brain anatomy," Jay said in the report.

Benefits of Swearing

A 2015 study found that well-educated people with a wide vocabulary were better at coming up with curse words than those who were less verbally fluent.

The study also asked participants to list as many words that start with F, A, or S in one minute. Another minute was also allotted to come up with curse words that start with those three letters.

The study found that those who came up with the most F, A, and S words also produced the most swear words. Jay, who authored the study, said it is a sign of intelligence to the degree that "language is correlated with intelligence."

He noted that people, who are good at language, are also good at coming up with a swearing vocabulary. He added that swearing could also be associated with social intelligence.

According to a Daily Mail report, science also reveals that those who swear are honest at an individual level with integrity at the society level.

Jay said that people see those who swear as being more honest as truth-tellers get right to the point and do not further formulate what they will say. Meanwhile, liars who use more brainpower to create stories are very meticulous about word usage.

Aside from being a sign of intelligence and honesty, Jay noted that saying profanities can amp up your pain tolerance.

Another study found people cursing as they plunged their hands into icy water felt less pain, and were able to keep their hands in the water longer than those who said a neutral word, 9 News reported.

Jay said that swearing allows people to express their emotions symbolically without doing it tooth and nail. He also noted that cursing becomes a remote form of aggression.

Jay said that the purpose of swearing is to vent emotion, and there is an advantage on that as it allows one to cope while also communicating readily to bystanders what one's emotional state is.

"It has that advantage of emotional efficiency -- it's very quick and clear," he said in a report.

Creativity can also be one of the upsides of swearing, which can be centered on the brain's right side. The author of "Swearing is Good For You," Emma Byrne, said they know that patients who have a stroke on the right side tend to become less emotional, less able to understand and tell jokes, and they tend to stop swearing even if they swore a lot before.