Damn!
A three-part study published in the
journal Social Psychological and
Personality Science (I have a lifetime subscription! Screw the rate hikes!)
purports to show that people who swear are generally more trustworthy. An
international team of researchers, led by Gilad Feldman of Maastricht
University in the Netherlands, analyzed swearing in society before coming to
this conclusion.
How the bleep did they do this you
might ask? According to London’s Daily Mail, the team studied 276 people to
find out how- and how often- they curse. They asked those surveyed to list
their “favorite” swear words and to “self-report” their everyday use of
profanity, as well as the emotions they associate(d) with those cuss words. The
test subjects were then asked to fill out a psychological survey to gauge their
honesty…which helped determine how likely they were to lie.
The majority of respondents reported
that their swearing was typically used to express negative emotions, like
anger. The researchers also found that those who lied less wrote down a higher
number of frequently used swear words.
But, could it be that those who were less
honest simply didn’t admit to
swearing as often as they actually did, whereas the more honest souls came
clean? Hmmm. Experts think not, based on how the survey was designed and
certain other tell-tale signs of prevarication.
I’ve always believed that frequent
swearing, at least in public, was the sign of an undisciplined mind and a lack
of vocabulary. Neither my father nor my mother swore much, and almost never in
front of others they didn’t know well. In fact, my mother considered “damn” and
“hell” to be serious epithets.
However, since honesty and
truthfulness are things I value most, and ironically crucial to a blog of this
nature, if you ask me if I believe the study results, I won’t hesitate in my
answer.
Effing right I do!
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