为什么说脏话会让你更坚强
Research Swearing boosts performance by helping people feel focused, disinhibited, study finds WASHINGTON — Letting out a swear word in a moment of frustration can feel good. Now, research suggests that it can be good for you, too: Swearing can boost people’s physical performance by helping them overcome their inhibitions and push themselves harder on tests of strength and endurance, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.
“In many situations, people hold themselves back—consciously or unconsciously—from using their full strength,” said study author Richard Stephens, PhD, of Keele University in the U.K. “Swearing is an easily available way to help yourself feel focused, confident and less distracted, and ‘go for it’ a little more.”
The article was published in the journal American Psychologist.
Previous research by Stephens and others has found when people swear, they perform better on many physical challenges, including how long they can keep their hand in ice water and how long they can support their body weight during a chair push-up exercise.
“That is now a well replicated, reliable finding,” Stephens said. “But the question is—how is swearing helping us? What’s the psychological mechanism?”
He and his colleagues believed that it might be that swearing puts people in a disinhibited state of mind. “By swearing, we throw off social constraint and allow ourselves to push harder in different situations,” he said.
To test this, the researchers conducted two experiments with 192 total participants. In each, they asked participants to repeat either a swear word of their choice, or a neutral word, every two seconds while doing a chair push-up. After completing the chair push-up challenge, participants answered questions about their mental state during the task.The questions included measures of different mental states linked to disinhibition, including how much positive emotion participants felt, how funny they found the situation, how distracted they felt and how self-confident they felt. The questions also included a measure of psychological “flow,” a state in which people become immersed in an activity in a pleasant, focused way. Overall, and confirming earlier research, the researchers found that participants who swore during the chair push-up task were able to support their body weight significantly longer than those who repeated a neutral word. Combining the results of the two experiments as well as a previous experiment conducted as part of an earlier study, they also found that this difference could be explained by increases in participants’ reports of psychological flow, distraction and self-confidence—all important aspects of a disinhibition.
“These findings help explain why swearing is so commonplace,” said Stephens. “Swearing is literally a calorie neutral, drug free, low cost, readily available tool at our disposal for when we need a boost in performance.
” In the future, the researchers plan to explore whether this boost from swearing works in any context where success depends on overcoming hesitancy, according to study co-author Nicholas Washmuth, DPT, of the University of Alabama in Huntsville. “Our labs are now studying how swearing influences public speaking and romantic approach behaviors, two situations where people tend to hesitate or second-guess themselves,” he said.
Article: “Don’t Hold Back: Swearing Improves Strength Through State Disinhibition,” by Richard Stephens, PhD, Harry Dowber, MSc, and Christopher Richardson, MSc, Keele University; and Nicholas Washmuth, DPT, University of Alabama in Huntsville. American Psychologist, published online Dec. 18, 2025.
Richard Stephens, PhD, can be reached via email.
研究发现，说脏话可以帮助人们集中注意力、不受拘束，从而提高绩效 阅读期刊文章 “不要退缩”（PDF，1MB）在新窗口中打开 华盛顿——在沮丧的时刻说出脏话会让人感觉很好。现在，研究表明，这对你也有好处：根据美国心理学会发表的研究，说脏话可以帮助人们克服压抑，在力量和耐力测试中更加努力，从而提高人们的身体表现。 “在很多情况下，人们会有意无意地阻止自己充分发挥自己的力量，”该研究的作者、英国基尔大学的理查德·斯蒂芬斯博士说，“说脏话是一种简单易行的方法，可以帮助自己感到专注、自信、不分心，并更加‘努力’一点。” 这篇文章发表在《美国心理学家》杂志上。 斯蒂芬斯和其他人之前的研究发现，当人们发誓时，他们在许多身体挑战上表现得更好，包括他们可以将手放在冰水中多长时间以及在椅子俯卧撑练习中可以支撑自己的体重多长时间。 斯蒂芬斯说：“现在这是一个得到充分复制、可靠的发现。” “但问题是——说脏话对我们有什么帮助？其心理机制是什么？” 他和他的同事认为，说脏话可能会让人们处于一种不受约束的心态。 “通过说脏话，我们摆脱了社会束缚，让自己在不同的情况下更加努力，”他说。 为了验证这一点，研究人员进行了两项实验，总共有 192 名参与者。在每个实验中，他们要求参与者在做椅子俯卧撑时每两秒重复一次他们选择的脏话或中性词。完成椅子俯卧撑挑战后，参与者回答了有关任务期间心理状态的问题。这些问题包括对与去抑制相关的不同心理状态的测量，包括参与者感受到多少积极情绪、他们发现这种情况有多有趣、他们感觉有多心烦意乱以及他们感觉有多自信。这些问题还包括心理“心流”的测量，即人们以愉快、专注的方式沉浸在某项活动中的状态。 总体而言，研究人员发现，在椅子俯卧撑任务中说脏话的参与者能够比那些重复中性单词的参与者更长时间地支撑自己的体重，这证实了早期的研究。结合这两个实验的结果以及作为早期研究的一部分进行的先前实验的结果，他们还发现这种差异可以通过参与者报告的心理流动、分心和自信的增加来解释——这些都是去抑制的重要方面。 “这些发现有助于解释为什么说脏话如此普遍，”斯蒂芬斯说。 “说脏话实际上是一种零卡路里、无药物、低成本、随时可用的工具，当我们需要提高表现时，可以使用它。” 研究合著者、亨茨维尔阿拉巴马大学 DPT 尼古拉斯·瓦什穆斯 (Nicholas Washmuth) 表示，未来，研究人员计划探索脏话带来的这种促进作用是否适用于任何成功依赖于克服犹豫的环境。 “我们的实验室现在正在研究脏话如何影响公开演讲和浪漫的接近行为，在这两种情况下，人们往往会犹豫或事后怀疑自己，”他说。 文章： “不要退缩：咒骂通过状态解除抑制提高力量”，
作者：Richard Stephens 博士、Harry Dowber 理学硕士和 Christopher Richardson 理学硕士，基尔大学；和 Nicholas Washmuth，DPT，阿拉巴马大学亨茨维尔分校。《美国心理学家》，2025 年 12 月 18 日在线发布。
您可以通过电子邮件联系理查德·斯蒂芬斯博士。