--- title: The Surprising Health Benefits of Swearing description: Profanity can come with numerous physical, psychological, and social perks. canonical: https://time.com/7272667/swearing-curse-words-health-benefits/ author: Stacey Colino article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2025-04-01T18:46:55.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:50:06.647Z article:section: Health og:title: The Surprising Health Benefits of Swearing og:description: Profanity can come with numerous physical, psychological, and social perks. og:url: https://time.com/7272667/swearing-curse-words-health-benefits/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta1d6a4743033c9ee/6998c55c93610c6bb8c2f7f3/benefits-of-swearing.png?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2400 og:image:height: 1350 og:image:alt: benefits-of-swearing og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: The Surprising Health Benefits of Swearing twitter:description: Profanity can come with numerous physical, psychological, and social perks. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta1d6a4743033c9ee/6998c55c93610c6bb8c2f7f3/benefits-of-swearing.png?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # The Surprising Health Benefits of Swearing > Sponsored content. 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Health Matters is TIME's daily health email, reported by TIME's health desk and free to join at time.com/newsletters. It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free daily newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators. ## Video: Therapists Raise Red Flags About Using 'Therapy Speak' Online [Watch (HLS stream): Therapists Raise Red Flags About Using 'Therapy Speak' Online](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/oxvh4VUE.m3u8) (4:07)  _Published 2023-08-24. The classic vision of therapy revolved around a person on a couch, supine, tapping into their deepest and darkest hopes and fears. A modern-day remix might look like this: a person still on a couch, but at home, scrolling through a constantly refreshing selection of mental-health content on social-media platforms like TikTok and Instagram._ by [Stacey Colino](https://time.com/author/stacey-colino/) ## Stacey Colino Colino is a contributor for TIME. Apr 1, 2025 6:46 PM UTC  Photo-Illustration by Chloe Dowling for TIME (Texture: Golfloi17/Getty Images) by [Stacey Colino](https://time.com/author/stacey-colino/) ## Stacey Colino Colino is a contributor for TIME. Apr 1, 2025 6:46 PM UTC Many of us try to suppress the urge to blurt out an expletive when something goes wrong. But the instinct may actually be useful: Research has found that using profanity can have beneficial effects on people’s stress, anxiety, and depression. In fact, there are numerous potential physical, psychological, and social perks related to the power of a well-timed F-bomb. Here are the hidden health perks of swearing that science has uncovered. ## It can help you tolerate pain Cursing induces what’s called hypoalgesia, or decreased sensitivity to pain. [Researchers](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19590391/) have shown that after uttering a curse word, people can keep their hands submerged in ice water for longer than if they say a more neutral word. “Swearing is a readily accessible, low-cost means of self-help,” says Richard Stephens, a senior lecturer in psychology at Keele University in the U.K. and author of the book _Black Sheep: The Hidden Benefits of Being Bad_. But here’s an interesting twist: “People who swear less often get more benefit from swearing when they need it,” he says. In other words, cursing all the time zaps the words of their potency. ## You’ll work out harder Swearing aloud is associated with improvements in exercise performance, including cycling power and hand-grip strength. A [study](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/17470218221082657) in a 2022 issue of the _Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology_ even found that when people repeated a swear word while doing [chair push-ups](https://www.nyp.org/healthlibrary/multimedia/how-to-do-chair-push-ups), they reported feeling more self-confidence. **Read More**: [_8 Things to Say During a Fight With Your Partner_](https://time.com/7268358/what-to-say-during-fight-with-partner/) Swearing seems to help people shed their social inhibitions, according to Stephens, one of the study’s authors. “When we’re disinhibited, we’re no longer as worried about negative social evaluation,” which in turn leads to greater confidence, he explains. ## It can help you regulate emotions A [study](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/17470218221082657) in the _European Journal of Social Psychology_ found that when people wrote about a time they felt socially excluded, then repeated a swear word for two minutes, their hurt feelings and social distress were significantly lower than for people who used a neutral word. In another [study](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1369847818301918), researchers found that when drivers cursed after being refused the right of way by another driver, or when they encountered a traffic jam caused by cars that were stopped illegally, cursing helped them tamp down their anger and return to a more balanced emotional state. “Swearing allows us to vent and cope with emotions such as anger and frustration,” says Timothy Jay, a professor of psychology emeritus at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts and author of the books _Why We Curse_ and _Cursing in America_. ## It can make people feel closer “I think of swear words as being like a box of tools,” Jay says. ”We can use them in different ways in different situations for personal or social gain.” There appear to be surprising social benefits associated with the well-timed use of profanity. “Some people believe that profanity can break social taboos in a generally non-harmful way, \[which\] can create an informal environment in which people feel like insiders together,” says Ben Bergen, a professor of cognitive science at the University of California, San Diego, and author of the book _What the F: What Swearing Reveals About Language, Our Brains, and Ourselves_. “Similarly, swearing can lead others to believe that the person speaking is honest because they’re saying what they really believe.” As evidence, consider this: A series of [studies](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1948550616681055) published in the journal _Social Psychological and_ _Personality Science_ found a positive relationship between the use of profanity and honesty, based on how and when people cursed in their everyday lives; the researchers concluded that “profanity was associated with less lying and deception” and a greater sense of integrity. In another series of [studies](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/106831605160512331329952) in the journal _Psychology, Crime & Law_, researchers found that the use of swear words in (fictitious) legal testimony made the testimony seem more credible to participants than when the same testimony was free of profanity. **Read More**: [_Are You a Hostile Punctuator???_](https://time.com/7272258/hostile-punctuation-texting-email-exclamation-question-marks/) In the right context, swearing has been found to bolster social connections. In a [study](https://seth-smith.org.uk/images/laughter/expletives.pdf) involving workers in a soap factory in New Zealand, researchers recorded their daily interactions and concluded that when the F-word was used on the factory floor to express a complaint or objection, it seemed to engender more communal feelings among workers. Of course, it is possible to overdo it. People who swear frequently are sometimes perceived as angry, hostile, or aggressive, so there’s a potential tipping point to using profanity. It’s also important to know your audience. “Observing how others use language is usually a good first step in a new environment,” Bergen says. “It’s not just whether people are using profanity or not—it’s how they’re using it and what specific words or kinds of words they’re using. Is this the kind of situation where mild swears seem generally used? Do people seem to react positively to people using language that way? Is everyone using profanity or just particular people?” Swearing etiquette may depend on the social hierarchy and power dynamics in certain situations, such as the workplace, says Jay. Just because the boss uses curse words doesn’t necessarily mean you can get away with it. (You’ll also want to modify your language around young children.) Being attentive to nuances in how curse words are used in different settings can guide you toward a more productive relationship with profanity. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/7272667/swearing-curse-words-health-benefits/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/7272667/swearing-curse-words-health-benefits/"},"headline":"The Surprising Health Benefits of Swearing","datePublished":"2025-04-01T18:46:55.000Z","dateModified":"2026-08-04T07:50:06.647Z","description":"Profanity can come with numerous physical, psychological, and social perks.","url":"https://time.com/7272667/swearing-curse-words-health-benefits/","keywords":["Wellness","freelance","Evergreen","healthscienceclimate"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta1d6a4743033c9ee/6998c55c93610c6bb8c2f7f3/benefits-of-swearing.png?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Stacey Colino","jobTitle":"Colino is a contributor for TIME.","url":"https://time.com/author/stacey-colino/"}],"articleSection":"Health","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta1d6a4743033c9ee/6998c55c93610c6bb8c2f7f3/benefits-of-swearing.png?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"benefits-of-swearing","caption":"","creditText":"Photo-Illustration by Chloe Dowling for TIME (Texture: Golfloi17/Getty Images)","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/health/","name":"Health"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/wellness/","name":"Wellness"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/7272667/swearing-curse-words-health-benefits/","name":"The Surprising Health Benefits of Swearing"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Therapists Raise Red Flags About Using 'Therapy Speak' Online","description":"The classic vision of therapy revolved around a person on a couch, supine, tapping into their deepest and darkest hopes and fears. 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