2 Comments

  1. Makes sense to me. For those who rarely swear, swearing serves as a distraction from the pain because you’re actively doing something different than you normally do, which takes mental effort. However, if you’re used to swearing all the time, swearing is not distracting anymore. I’d be interested to know if the pain experience would be lessened for frequent swearers if they used some other rarely spoken word(s) instead (e.g. “Bailiwick!!” or “Usufruct!!”) I’d guess it’d have an effect, but not as large as when non-swearers swear, because there isn’t the aspect of doing something taboo to add to the distraction.

  2. In other words, would all that horrible-sounding nonsense really help Yosemite Sam? 😉

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