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The Wisdom of Psychopaths
In this engrossing journey into the lives of psychopaths and their infamously crafty behaviors, the renowned psychologist Kevin Dutton reveals that there is a...
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Earlier this spring the Billboard pop music chart marked a milestone of sorts. Three of its top 10 hits prominently featured the same four-letter word: Cee Lo Green’s “F**k You,” Pink’s “F**kin’ Perfect” and Enrique Iglesias’s “Tonight (I’m Lovin’ You),” where the curse word appeared in the chorus. What’s going on here?
When it comes to popular culture, experts say, swearwords make fans feel as though they are part of a select club. “There’s a power to the words because they make you feel as if you fit in, and they identify you as part of a specific demographic,” says Timothy Jay, a professor of psychology at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts who has studied swearing for decades. Brain mapping shows that when we yell a choice word in anger, the brain’s right hemisphere, which reacts to emergencies and helps us process emotion, kicks into gear. Additionally, we get a little goose from the limbic system, which regulates emotion and behavior.
Parental worries about the prevalence of bad language may be overblown. Although swearing appears to be everywhere, it is actually still quite rare. Even if kids are cursing at a younger age, foul language accounts for only 0.3 to 0.7 percent of our daily speech. Experimental psychologist Elisah D’Hooge and her colleagues at Ghent University in Belgium are attempting to explain why.
In a study to be published this June in the journal Psychological Science, her team reports that we have a “verbal self-monitor” between the mental production of speech and the actual uttering of words that keeps us from making mistakes even when we are distracted. Our self-monitor “cares about context” and is “especially sensitive” to intercept words that might be inappropriate in a particular social situation, D’Hooge says.
In one of her experiments studying the effect of crude words on the speed of speech, participants were shown a picture on which a neutral word appeared and then a taboo word. For example, a picture of a horseshoe was paired with the word “crab,” as well as with “slut.” The participants were then asked to name the pictures as quickly as possible. Results showed that participants paused longer but made fewer errors when naming the picture when a taboo word was superimposed. That means their verbal self-monitor was more “stringent” when encountering the offensive word, D’Hooge says.
Nevertheless, the monitor is flexible. In the 1940s, for example, saying “goddamn it” was a no-no, but it became more acceptable in the 1960s, when new words, such as the “f” word emerged as taboo. There will always be some situations in which our verbal self-monitor will go on high alert, showing its “context-sensitive” side. “It can be cool to use the ‘f’ word a lot when you’re a 16-year-old boy hanging out with your friends, but it will be a lot less cool to use the word in the presence of your mum,” D’Hooge observes. Unless, of course, she’s a pop singer.
This article was originally published with the title Join the F***ing Club.
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10 Comments
Add CommentThe music industry, and in a wider sense the media industry have found out long ago that shock sells. This is why we have such a steady stream of professional rebels, pure products of the system they supposedly fight against.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe the people are so bored out of our minds that we accept anything that, for a few moments, relieves our boredom.
But not to worry. With all the environmental problems heading our way, we'll soon be living in "interesting times"...
"ll"!?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think this kind of language is unwarranted, sir.
Who mad the list of taboo words, the Christian Right? The Supreme court finally said that TV shows cannot be fined by the FCC for dropping the F bomb as was done routinely after Bush came into power. In ALL the times I have used that word, NO ONE has died, gotten hurt, went to hell or even burped. If one defers to Christians and the bible, the only thing one should not say is goddam it. I am willing to play the game when all those of voting age in this country agree on the "bad" words, I will stop saying them. From the time kids are old enough to understand language, they are told some words are "bad". This is the only reason people find them "bad". The parents define "bad" words on the basis of what they were told was "bad". The bible has like a billion pages, if God thought certain words would send people to hell, wouldn't he have mentioned it in his manual.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSwearing is popular well beyond pop culture. Don't believe me? Check out http://fuckyeahneuroscience.tumblr.com/ . There's a whole raft of scientific tumblr blogs that follow the same leitmotif, and most of them are excellent.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBy the way, I think if you are going to write an academic article about the word fuck, you should either write it in full or not use it at all. After all, you don't write p*nis do you?
Swearing has been part of normal life since humans adopted speech.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMusic is at last starting to reflect that fact and it obviously leads to young people feeling more engaged.
The Christian right needs to be ignored and packed away in an old cupboard.
Where in the article did the writer include any comments from the Christian right? All I see are comments from two psychologists. So what should be done with the progressive left when its fascism is on display? Is there room in the cupboard?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs common today as it is, vulgar language has been around since the evolution of language. It is, however, the language of the vulgar (vulgate) and reflects on the moral, ethical status of the individual That people of wide economic status use it only shows that they, individually, are essentially crude no matter (their economic state).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs a vulgar person, I completely agree with you. Never the less, I rarely cuss. It isn't that I think the cuss words are bad. It is primarily because most of the time they are used incorrectly and I'm a bit of a linguistic prude. The only significant time in history when cussing wasn't common place wass the late Victorian era and its immediate aftermath. Before then the supposedly offensive words were common place and not considered overly vulgar. Blasphemy however, was a totally different issue and rather than being offensive, was very dangerous. By the way, it is damnit rather than dammit if you want to cuss. Dammit means being obstructive to flow, usually of water.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'll spare you my opinion of the supposed "Christian right" and the way they model themselves after a perverted serial killer that had a tantrum when the Pope told him that sinning is sinning.
I wish to question the interpretation of the experiment by D'Hooge et al. Granted that this may be due to the single example chosen by the reviewer. Isn't it possible that when presented with a picture of a horseshoe and the word crab, the brain interprets it as some kind of word picture game - horseshoe crab? The hesitation could be from the momentary attempt to make sense of horseshoe slut.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOveruse of words drain them of meaning. I don't fucking think anyone thinks of the fucking sex act when saying fuck, unless it is something like fuck you and the horse you rode in on.
I live in a country where english is not the native language. Children use the equivalent of "son of a whore" and bastard without even knowing what they mean only because they heard their parents. Shit is also used explitavely, with the local accent. I have heard clergy use the word fuck, not like the Sopranos, but in the sense of some gone wrong (like SNAFU). There is no emotional connection with the words. They are only sounds.
I grew up saying gosh which evolved over time to goddammit; sugar became shit; fish became fuck, etc.
To spare myself and my children embarrassment when visiting our english speaking relatives, we adopted Shazbat, from Mork and Mindy, for mundane use, such as hitting your finger with a hammer. There really is no fucking need to express yourself like the fucking Sopranos. It shows weakness and lack of self-confidence and lack of ability to express yourself.
Perhaps this permissiveness has reached the point where because we no longer have shocking, juicy explitives violence is the alternative.
Yea to you, Bucketofsquid, that is a cogent response to my comment on the article: "Join the F***ing Club". Having had a 30 year career in the USN, I think I have heard nearly every vulgar, descriptive word or phrase (in more than one language) but cringe at the over and mis-use of such in place of clarifying language. I,too, have occasion to vent with such language but, it is a rarity and usually does not improve a confrontational situation. May you have smooth sailing with a following breeze.
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