Mind your tongue: teen swearers perceived as less trustworthy and less intelligent

By Emma Young Crap. Merde. Ibn sharmoota.* Swear words exist in most cultures (Japan is a notable exception), and many of us use them so casually and so frequently that by the time children start school, they have, according to one count, acquired a profanity bank of 30 to 40 words. (My own seven-year-old loves to whisper “fricking” in a friend’s ear, making them both giggle guiltily. My only defence is that he certainly didn’t get that one from me…) Since even words like “f.” are used conversationally, at least in the US and UK, surely they’ve lost the power to trigger a negative response in a listener – especially as far as younger adults are concerned? Not according to a new paper  published in the Journal of Language and Social Psychology. Melanie DeFrank and Patricia Kahlbaugh, at Southern Connecticut State University, found that teenagers who swear casually were judged by college students as being less intelligent and less trustworthy. DeFrank and Kahlbaugh recruited 138 students, including 101 women. The participants first completed a questionnaire asking them to rate the offensiveness of 10 swear words. (The words in order of most to least offensive, according to the participants’ ratings, were: bitch, f., bastard, shit, ass, jerk, screw, butt, crap and dang.) The participants also estimated how often they used and heard these kinds of words. While 17 per cent said they used between zero and five daily, just over 20 per cent repor...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Language Source Type: blogs