What the HEL? The 5th SwiSca Symposium on Swearing

6th SwiSca symposium keynote address: Dr. Richard Stephens

“Give me strength!” Benefits of swearing for pain, physical performance and beyond

Abstract

Swearing is a fascinating aspect of language. For instance, evidence from Tourette's sufferers and aphasics suggests swearing may not rely on the usual language areas in the left cortex. In addition, while people tend to think of the use of four letter words as a modern phenomenon, the reality is that the earliest recorded uses of these words date back 1,000 years (the F word is one of the most recent, at c1500). Dr Richard Stephens, a psychologist based at Keele University in the United Kingdom, will be talking about his research, published in well-respected peer-review journals, conducted over the last decade. Across a number of studies Dr Stephens’s work has shown that swearing can help people become more tolerant of pain, that swearing can boost performance of physical strength and power tasks as well as other facets of human performance. Dr Stephens’ research demonstrates close links between swearing and the expression of emotion. However, his more recent work suggests that swearing can benefit performance via mechanisms beyond emotional arousal.

Bio

Dr. Richard Stephens is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at Keele University. Richard researches the psychology of swearing including why people swear in response to pain. He is a former Chair of the British Psychological Society Psychobiology Section (2013-2017), winner of the 2014 Wellcome Trust/ Guardian Science Writing Prize and contributes regularly to TV, radio, print and online media. Richard’s first book Black Sheep The Hidden Benefits of Being Bad was published to critical acclaim and was the winner of the British Psychological Society Book of the Year Award (Popular Science) 2016. 

https://www.keele.ac.uk/psychology/people/richardstephens/