How do we perceive insults?
Sticks and stones may break my bones but words... also hurt me.
Hello my good human and welcome to this newsletter. Every Wednesday I share news that I find interesting from the world of science and academia. I do my best to write small explanations about them and start a discussion. If you found this newsletter online and want to get them right in your inbox you can subscribe using the cute button below! It’s free!
For this edition of the newsletter, we’re focusing on a very exciting topic for me. Insults and swear words. And no, we’re not going to analyze the link between language fluency and swearing, or the increased pain threshold people showcase while swearing, but about a new study that shows how exactly our brains receive and understand insults. Be warned, that since we’re talking about them, we are going to write some of them down so just a little content warning for you. Basically, is there any truth in the saying “I’m rubber, you’re glue”? Plus some more news about the risk factors for dementia, open science and more! Let’s dive in…
Can we categorize insults?
Before we go into the latest research, let’s see how we could categorize swear words and what swear words say about us. There are four common themes that we could group insults at least when it comes to describing humans. According to a study looking at personality characteristics, those themes are worthlessness(absurd, pointless, futile), stupidity (dumb, stupid, foolish), depravity( disgraceful, shameful), and peculiarity (weird, bizarre, etc). All of these words are used to judge others based on some standards that vary between people.
And there are a lot of swear words… Oh, so many swear words. And the swear words we use actually tell a lot about our cultures. There was a paper published in 2008 that examined how these terms of abuse reinforce our cultures. In that paper, they talked to 3000 people from 11 different countries and they found 12000(!!) different swearwords. There were some countries like Germans, American and Italians who used more often terms of abuse that had to do with the posterior, while British and Dutch preferred using genital terms. My favorite group however are the Norwegians that had their own niche by using satanic expressions. Stay classy Norway.
One other interesting find about this research was that swear words that included the other persons family members were only common in the Mediterranean cultures. As it turns out, culturally, us people from the Mediterranean we consider ourselves responsible for the groups we belong to.
How does our brain understand these words?
The latest research I came across this week had a simple title. “Do People Get Used to Insulting Language?”. In order to do that, they measured their EEG (electroencephalogram) for the electrical activity of the brain, and their skin conductance to measure arousal. The experiments included repeating insulting statements (Lefteris is a meatball), compliments (Lefteris is nice), and just descriptive statements (Lefteris is tall).
The tests were conducted in a controlled environment so their insulting power is somewhat limited. But studying insults in a uncontrolled “real” setting would be hard to do ethically. Nevertheless, what the results showed is that our brain perceives insults in the same way we respond so other sudden events like slaps. And what was more interesting is that we were having the same reaction to the insults even after continuous repetition and even if the insults were not addressed to them.
So our brains react more intensely to negative words, even compared to the compliments. This means that sticks and stones may break your bones, but insults will also… at least sting for a bit.
Some good news from the Open Science front
I often try to add a separate section with some positive news in the newsletter (although today’s main theme wasn’t too bad was it?) and this week I read a very interesting article at Arstechnica that stated that the US government decided to make all research it funds open access on publication. This means that all the papers coming out of universities that the US government has funded, will automatically be available to the public and other researchers without a pay wall. I generally believe that we shouldn’t really be looking at the US for cultural or political guidance, but in this case… more of that everywhere else please! The policy will come in effect in 2026 and hopefully this will lead to greater science outreach and better results.
Any more news?
People in academia are constantly coming up with new and exciting things so if you need more to quench your curiosity here are some more headlines.
Social exclusion more common form of bullying than physical, verbal aggression, by University of Missouri
What older adults do while they sit affects dementia risk, study indicates, by University of Southern California
Dolphins form largest alliance network outside humans, study finds, by EurekaAlert
That’s all for this week! I hope that the rest of the week will be calm and rewarding. Did you like this newsletter? If you did you can subscribe to it at the top of the page and why not share it around using this sexy little button here
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Until next week… take care and be kind [=