Why the #%!@ do we Swear? The Neuroscience Behind Sex Differences in Expletive Language

Swear words in everyday life appear a somewhat concerning, though almost essential occurrence. As most people can attest to, these choice expletives serve a variety of functions, from expressing anger, reacting to injury, promoting aggressiveness, or simply emphasizing a point. Taboo language is a widely and passionately discussed topic, often in terms of censorship and minimizing its negative impact. However, conversations in the scientific community focus on the evolutionary and biological development of swearing, and interestingly on its positive impact. A blog post titled "The Science of Swearing" suggests that swear words can achieve a number of desirable outcomes, such as joking or storytelling, stress management, group cohesion, or as a replacement for potential physical aggression.

With this multi-faceted approach to swear words, an interesting question remains: how has swearing become associated with differences between males and females. Sex differences in swear words have been reported across cultures and over time. In general, males use more frequent and more forceful obscene language than females. A review conducted by Ginsburg et al. (2003) gives an overview of past research conducted on sex differences in vulgar language, in terms of types of usage, attributions and perceptions, and why these sex differences occur.[1] They explain that there are several theories accounting for why males may swear more than females. Evolutionarily, profanity may have originally been used during male combat as a means to shock and awe opponents. Additionally, it may contribute to destructive aggressive and sexual urges in males. Comparatively, from a socialization perspective, females may be taught to use more polite and less forceful words, thus swearing less.

Studies on neurolinguistic perspectives on swearing have also contributed to knowledge of sex differences. A study by Lancker and Cummings (1999) found that use of expletives is increased in adults with Gilles de la Tourette syndrome (GTS), a condition estimated to have a 9:1 male to female sex ratio.[2] Further studies of the physiological impact of swearing on the brain have revealed some important insights. A different blog with the same title "The Science of Swearing" describes that our brains are hard-wired to react to taboo words. The amygdala, an emotion-processing center in the brain is activated in response to reading a swear word.  A potential explanation for this might be that swearing can communicate strong emotions better than non-taboo words. A sociocultural sex difference explanation relating to this could be that males are encouraged to swear to release feelings of anger and aggression while females are taught to suppress these emotions.

In addition, a fascinating role of swearing can actually be to lessen the effects of physical pain. A study conducted by Richard Stephens and Claudia Umland[3] in 2011 asked participants to stick their hand into freezing cold water and repeat either a favorite expletive or a neutral word. Perhaps unsurprisingly for anyone who’s ever smashed their toe into a piece of furniture, swearing increased pain tolerance and heart rate compared to not swearing. This study also examined sex differences between subjects. As shown in the figure below, in comparison between swearing and not swearing, males showed slightly greater differences in pain tolerance and heart rate increase compared to females.

Taken together, these findings on sex differences in swear words present several interesting implications. Since the literature on the neurological differences between men and women in swearing is relatively sparse, speculation is far more prevalent than definitive conclusions at this time. A clear finding is that males appear to swear more than females, as evidenced by attributions and stereotypes in society. However the primary inconclusive debate concerns whether this difference is due to biological factors, sociocultural learning, or a combination of the two. One biological possibility, considering the clear relationship between swearing and aggression, and higher levels of aggression in males, is that prenatal exposure to androgens and higher levels of testosterone are the mediating factors that contribute to both increased swearing and aggression in males. As Ginsburg suggests, the cultural universality of greater male expletive language suggests some sort of biological predisposition. Of course, cultural norms and rules certainly contribute to exaggerate these differences by inflicting harsher societal penalties on females for swearing than males.

The bottom line of the science of swearing appears to be that regardless of male or female, taboo words can actually benefit the speaker (not suggesting that a child uses this argument in front of their furious parent after letting an f-bomb fly) but the study of swear words undoubtedly reveals an interesting and nuanced side of human nature.

References:

[1] Ginsburg, H. J., Ogletree, S. M., & Silakowski, T. D. 2003. Vulgar language: Review of sex differences in usage, attributions, and pathologies. North American Journal of Psychology, 5, 105-116.

[2] Lancker, D. V., & Cummings, J. L. 1999. Expletives: Neurolinguistic and neurobehavioral perspectives on swearing. Brain Research Reviews, 31, 83-104.

[3] Stephens, R. & Umland, C. 2011. Swearing as a response to pain- Effect of daily swearing frequency. The Journal of Pain, 12, 1274-1281.

Neuroscience in the News: Terminology of Sex and Gender in Society

Neuroscience is one of today’s trending topics. With recent advancements in technology, neuroscience is a field that is generating more complex research at an exponential rate. As a result, our field is demanding more attention from the public eye. For example, a simple search of ScienceDaily for stories relating to “sex AND gender AND neuroscience” published within the last 30 days yields 149 stories and 226 videos!

As a whole, it is positive that public news sources are reporting the latest scientific findings. Without a subscription to a journal, many scientific articles are unavailable to the public. Even if the articles were available to the public, the complex language and technically demanding procedures might be difficult for an individual without a background in that field to understand; by having the popular press report on scientific articles, the research is disseminated into more useful terms. Furthermore, extending the discussion of scientific articles to the general public may help to alleviate many of the common misperceptions, such as fMRI activation of a particular region of interest proves causality of a particular behavior (i.e., activation of the amygdala causes feelings of fear).

Despite it being a generally positive concept that public news sources report on scientific findings, there are a few issues with the execution. The popular press is eager to publish its own interpretation of the latest neuroscience data and extend beyond the scope of the data to report the broader impact of such results. This concept, often referred to as neurorealism, overemphasizes the importance of a physical representation in the brain (often in the form of fMRI data) as proof for a particular behavior or experience. Simplified reports of the actual research in conjunction with sensationalization of results can be detrimental in the understanding of the empirical findings. Inconsistent language and minimal emphasis on appropriate terminology used in the popular press has the potential to result in some startlingly far-off public perceptions concerning results from neuroscience studies.

However, the criticism extends both ways. In the scientific community, language is often inconsistent from paper to paper, journal to journal, and researcher to researcher. Scientists’ use of different operations to assess a common construct is useful from the standpoint of converging operations. However, measuring one construct in multiple ways can muddle the layman’s discussion of the broader impact of the findings. This is especially true for topics involving sex and gender.

Sex and gender are topics surrounded by controversy from the get-go. To make items even more sensitive, each academic discipline seemingly has a different vocabulary for the topics of sex and gender. By the time the findings of these disciplines are reported in the popular press, without attention of the intricacies of the vocabularies, there is much opportunity for confusion to arise.

For example, a recent ScienceDaily article discusses the work of Burke, Cohen-Kettenis, Veltman, Klink, and Baker (2014). Burke et al. (2014) were interested in investigating the effects of puberty on hypothalamic activation after exposure to androstadienone, a sex hormone, for males, females, and individuals diagnosed with Gender Dysphoria. Although it is important that the public have access to results of studies such as the work of Burke et al. (2014) referenced here, the ScienceDaily article differs from the primary research in attention to detail. Vague definitions (or no definitions at all) of terms such as “men/boys,” “women/girls,” “experienced gender,” and “gender dysphoria,” only raise more questions.

After establishing that there is, in fact, a problem in the dissemination of findings in science to the general public, the next logical question is: what do we do about it? One possible solution is to encourage the publication of key findings directly from the empirical research in a popular press review of it. For example, providing a figure (Figure 1) from the Burke et al. (2014) research would allow readers of ScienceDaily to interpret results independently of a third party commentary or biased writing. For example, the ScienceDaily article reports: “Before puberty, the hypothalamus of boys with gender dysphoria hardly reacted to the odor, just as in other boys.”  Without the publication of Figure 1 in the popular press articles, how does the reader know what “hardly” means? Publishing the actual results of a study can help to elucidate the meaning of empirical findings.

Another possible solution is to suggest that authors of popular press articles obtain approval from the researchers regarding terminology. For example – providing a definition for “gender” or explicitly saying “XX females” rather than having a colloquial reference to “women/girls” in the ScienceDaily article would be beneficial in two ways. First, clearly reporting definitions for the proper terminology can help to develop a consistent vocabulary used by scientists and the general public alike, thus increasing the success of the dissemination of findings to the general public. Secondly, this dictionary, if you will, for sex and gender vocabulary has the potential to generate more useful research extension questions. That is to say that rather than wasting time attempting to understand one another, the scientific and broader communities can engage in increased conversation about “what’s next.”

Figure 1. Taken from Burke et al. (2014). Example of publishing key findings directly from empirical research in popular press articles.

References

Burke SM, Cohen-Kettenis PT, Veltman DJ, Klink DT, Bakker J (2014) Hypothalamic response to the chemo-signal androstadienone in gender dysphoric children and adolescents. Frontiers in Endocrinology 5:1-9.