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When I'm teaching the Intro to Keyboarding class at the CNIB, I'm often addressing people brand new to the world of computers and everything it entails, like e-mail, for instance. We work our way through the mysteries of the QWERTY keyboard (yes, the visually impaired can use the same keyboard as all the rest of us do) and discuss the different things they might do with any given key once they start into e-mail. The class always shares the most laughter, of course, as I explain the number keys when used in combo with the Shift key. Some of the students, especially the older ladies, question the decorum of using those symbols to indicate cuss words, so the next time I lead a class, I think I'll tell them about the study conducted by Richard Stephens, a psychologist and lead author of a 2009 study conducted at Britain's Keele University. His study is relevant to the ladies above all.
In the study, 64 college students were directed to submerge their hands in a bucket of ice water. One group was encouraged to repeat their favourite four-letter word over and over while their hands were in the water. The control group was asked to repeat a non-expletive word. The results showed that swearing not only enabled the test subjects to withstand the pain from the submerging longer, but also reduced their perception of the pain's intensity.
One item of interest for me is the fact that "the experiment's initial hypothesis was inspired by anecdotal evidence from some pain researchers that swearing was actually a maladaptive behavior that served only to make things worse." Hah! Ask anyone who's ever hammered their thumb instead of the nail they were aiming at if an epithet or two didn't help them feel better.
The other item is Stehpens' finding that swearing reduced the perception of pain more strongly in women than in men. Now I can assure the ladies that when something is really bothering them, it will be quite alright to "Shift" those keys, knowing they'll be bearing out science every time they do.