Slashdot Mirror
Study Finds Link Between Profanity and Honesty (neurosciencenews.com)
A team of researchers from the Netherlands, the UK, the U.S. and Hong Kong report in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science that people who use profanity are less likely to be associated with lying and deception. Neuroscience News reports: Profanity is obscene language which, in some social settings is considered inappropriate and unacceptable. It often refers to language that contains sexual references, blasphemy or other vulgar terms. It's usually related to the expression of emotions such as anger, frustration or surprise. But profanity can also be used to entertain and win over audiences. As dishonesty and profanity are both considered deviant they are often viewed as evidence of low moral standards. On the other hand, profanity can be positively associated with honesty. It is often used to express unfiltered feelings and sincerity. The researchers cite the example of President-elect Donald Trump who used swear words in some of his speeches while campaigning in last year's U.S. election and was considered, by some, to be more genuine than his rivals. The international team of researchers set out to gauge people's views about this sort of language in a series of questionnaires which included interactions with social media users. In the first questionnaire 276 participants were asked to list their most commonly used and favorite swear words. They were also asked to rate their reasons for using these words and then took part in a lie test to determine whether they were being truthful or simply responding in the way they thought was socially acceptable. Those who wrote down a higher number of curse words were less likely to be lying. A second survey involved collecting data from 75,000 Facebook users to measure their use of swear words in their online social interactions. The research found that those who used more profanity were also more likely to use language patterns that have been shown in previous research to be related to honesty, such as using pronouns like "I" and "me."
Those who are less likely to hold back what they are saying are more likely to not hold back what they are thinking. Big surprise.
As dishonesty and profanity are both considered deviant they are often viewed as evidence of low moral standards.
Purported links between honesty and profanity being what they are, it seems worthy of experimentation by scientific method to determine if deviant is at all relatively rare, and thus, deviant at all.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
some people think he's honest
and
he's not honest by any measure
are not in conflict. Trump uses profanity to appear honest; and as people associate profanity with honesty they attribute "straight-forward" and "honest" to his persona (I'm not American or pro or anti Trump, just an interested outside observer). Bullshit is an art, and he's better at it than most.
Clinton never grabbed a woman by the pussy, nor endorsed the practice. He got laid, which is different. The problem you and Trump seem to have is that you can't tell the difference between consensual, and non-consensual, sex. They're not equivilent.
-- sudon't
Air-ride Equipped
People who don't swear scare the fucking life out of me.
I don't, except in circumstances where I'm deliberately trying to shock, or at least surprise. It's not a matter of "repression", it's that profanity is not part of my vocabulary. You assume that people who don't swear are "repressing" or "censoring" themselves, but that assumption presumes that they actually do swear in their internal dialogue, but then don't say it out loud. But I don't use profanity in my internal dialogue, either, though I suppose I have some stand-in words (dang, etc.) which fill more or less the same purpose.
To put it another way, a good friend of mine like to say "If you don't scream FUCK when you hit your thumb with a hammer, your head will explode." My response is "When I hit my thumb with a hammer, I'm in way too much pain to go to the effort of remembering to scream FUCK." He's assuming that the curse word will be naturally present and that if you don't scream it it's because you're holding it back. For me, the curse word just isn't there, so what happens when I hit my thumb is a wordless howl of pain. No repression involved, and my head remains intact.
In addition, I think profanity is generally counterproductive. Rather than saying that something is "fucking stupid", why not spend two more seconds thinking, and articulate why it's stupid, or what about it is stupid? Your phrase accomplishes exactly nothing other than to make people understand that you're angry. It conveys no other information and does nothing to rectify the stupidity. Also, it's pretty common that when people bother to think about what exactly it is that's making them mad, they discover that, in fact, it's not stupid and that they just hadn't thought the whole situation through.
Finally, I find that the fact that I hardly ever use profanity makes it a really powerful tool on the rare occasions I do choose to use it. Those who use it constantly have basically nowhere to go when the situation deserves a really strong statement.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
First, I want to be clear that I don't know what Trump did here -- whether or not his actions were appropriate given the circumstances, etc. However...
If you've ever kissed a girl without asking her explicitly 'can I kiss you now?' you've pretty much done what Trump has done.
Wow. Setting aside the fact that groping genitals is generally considered at least a little more intimate than a kiss, there IS something about his phrasing that makes this SOUND a little different from your scenario.
Namely, Trump says "I don't even wait." Your interpretation is that he doesn't preface a kiss without some Victorian protocol saying, "Dear lady, may I be granted the favor of a kiss?" or something. Yes, I suppose it could mean that. It could also mean that Trump is implying he doesn't even "wait" for implied consent. (In the context of the quote, it sounds like he's talking about novel encounters with people he doesn't know well, rather than a sort of "date context" or something where the "implied consent" might be easier to tease out. ) But I agree that we don't have enough context to know precisely what he meant here. HOWEVER, I think the more concerning turn of phrase comes later in your quotation, namely "when you're a star they LET you do it".
That's not a phrase of implied consent. He doesn't say, "When you're a star they WANT you to do it." The implication of the phrasing is that the woman is "letting" you do something that she's at best somewhat ambivalent about. If we're only talking about a kiss, maybe that amounts to a miscue or sexual harassment. But then Trump follows it with "You can do anything" and then talking about groping genitals. Again, no mention of the woman's desire or wishes -- "You can do anything."
So, IF one chooses to take the preceding "they LET you do it" to mean the woman is giving less than strong affirmation even for a kiss, following it up with crotch grab just because "you can do anything" might be mistaken -- in this linguistic context -- as implying sexual assault.
Again, I don't know whether Trump was actually intending to say that, because he says all sorts of crap that he obviously doesn't mean literally. He also could just be bragging in the context where this statement was recorded, rather than referring to his actual practice. Or whatever.
But if you take his PHRASING literally, it seems to indicate significantly more aggressive behavior than simply failing to offer a Victorian verbal query before a kiss.