Scientists Say Swearing Can Make You Stronger and the Reason Has Nothing to do With Anger

F*CK YEAH!

Dragging a couch up the stairs. Holding a plank until your arms shake. Gritting your teeth as the last seconds of an exercise stretch on forever.

In moments like these, many people blurt out a swear word without thinking. It feels instinctive, almost primitive. Now psychologists argue that this reflex does more than vent frustration; it may flip a mental switch that lets the body use strength it usually keeps in reserve.

A new study suggests that swearing helps people “not hold back,” boosting physical performance by nudging the brain into a state of lowered restraint and heightened focus.

“In many situations, people hold themselves back — consciously or unconsciously — from using their full strength,” said Richard Stephens, a psychologist at Keele University. “Swearing is an easily available way to help yourself feel focused, confident and less distracted, and go for it a little more.”

Swearing … for Strength

The idea that profanity might help people push through pain or effort is not new to Stephens. He has been studying the physiological effects of swearing for more than 15 years, beginning with a now-famous experiment in which volunteers plunged their hands into ice water. Those who uttered a swear word tolerated the pain for longer than those who simply used a neutral word. The result earned Stephens and his colleagues an Ig Nobel Prize — a satirical prize awarded annually since 1991 to promote public engagement with scientific research — but it also launched a serious research program.

Over the years, his team found that swearing could increase grip strength, cycling power, plank times, wall sits, and push-ups. The effect kept showing up, so much so that the findings were turned into an award-winning book aptly titled Black Sheep: The Hidden Benefits of Being Bad. What remained unclear was why.

Early on, researchers suspected a classic “fight-or-flight” response, driven by adrenaline. But heart rate and other markers of arousal did not consistently rise. Something else was happening.

The new paper takes aim at this mystery.

What Happens When You “Don’t Hold Back”

The study involved two preregistered experiments with a total of 192 participants, plus an analysis that combined these data with an earlier experiment, bringing the total sample to 300 people.

The task was simple but brutal.

Participants sat on a chair, placed their hands under their thighs, lifted their feet, and held their body weight off the seat for as long as possible — some may know this exercise as the chair push-up. Every two seconds, they repeated either a swear word of their choice or a neutral word, such as “table.”

The results were strikingly consistent.

People who swore held the position about 10–11% longer than when they used a neutral word. Across all experiments, swearing reliably improved performance.

After the exercise ended, participants answered detailed questions about how they felt during the task. The questionnaire asked how confident they were, how focused, how distracted, and whether they felt “in the zone.”

Those answers revealed a pattern.

Flow, Focus, and Letting Go

When the researchers pooled data from all three experiments, they found that swearing increased three psychological states that helped explain the performance boost: psychological flow, distraction from self-doubt, and self-confidence.

Flow describes the feeling of being fully absorbed in an activity, when action feels effortless and time fades into the background. The flow effect is commonly reported in athletes, musicians, and gamers at their best.

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Swearing also distracted people from overthinking the task, which frees up mental bandwidth spent worrying about discomfort or failure. And it gave a small but measurable lift in confidence.

Together, these effects point to what psychologists call state disinhibition.

“By swearing, we throw off social constraint and allow ourselves to push harder,” said Stephens. The taboo nature of swear words appears to matter. Fake or invented curses do not have the same effect, as earlier studies showed. The brain seems to know the difference.

Swearing, in this view, briefly puts the pause on the brain’s internal brakes.

Why Humans Hold Back in the First Place

The paper places this phenomenon in a much broader context. People hold back all the time in all sorts of situations. Fear of judgment can mute public speakers. Job applicants hesitate in salary negotiations. Athletes returning from injury struggle to commit fully.

Yet the brain’s inhibition systems exist for good reasons. They keep us from acting impulsively or violating social norms, which could incur a great cost. But in moments that demand maximum effort, those same systems can become obstacles.

Swearing appears to offer a crude but effective workaround.

Vocalizations in general have long been linked to strength-enhancing effects. Tennis players grunt. Weightlifters shout. Studies show that even saying “ow” can reduce pain perception.

What sets swearing apart from meaningless grunts is the emotional component. Curse words break rules and often signal urgency. According to Stephens and colleagues, that taboo power may be precisely what helps short-circuit hesitation.

A Cheap but Risky Human Hack

“These findings help explain why swearing is so commonplace,” Stephens said. “Swearing is literally a calorie-neutral, drug-free, low-cost, readily available tool at our disposal for when we need a boost in performance.”

The researchers caution that swearing will not turn a novice into an elite athlete. And it comes with social risks.

Still, the implications stretch beyond the gym. The team plans to explore whether swearing can help in situations like public speaking or romantic approaches — moments where hesitation often stands in the way.

For now, the research offers a new way to think about what’s typically viewed as an unsavory habit. Swearing may be your brain’s way of telling itself, just for a moment, to stop holding back.

The findings appeared in the journal American Psychologist.