Research Study Finds Link Between Use of Profanity and Honesty

Profanity has long been socially associated with gruffness and ill manners but a team of multinational researchers from the USA, UK, Netherlands and Hong Kong report that people who use profanity frequently are less likely to be associated with deception. Profanity in this case includes any obscene language that contains sexual references or socially crass and vulgar terms, which can vary across cultures but share the same social effect. Dr. David Stillwell, who co-authored the paper published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science states that “the relationship between profanity and dishonesty is a tricky one. Swearing is often inappropriate but it can also be evidence that someone is telling you their honest opinion. Just as they aren’t filtering their language to be more palatable, they’re also not filtering their views. “.

The paper further cites the most recent Donald Trump victory in the United States Federal election as an example of vulgarity coming across as honesty, especially among typical politicians who are generally expected to be deceptive by nature. The study also is more than just an examination of the relationship between profanity and honesty, the team has also further analyzed behaviour in person and online (via Facebook collecting data from 75,000 users) to examine the societal level of the profanity/honesty relationship, breaking down behaviour by each US state. The research concludes that those who do use more curse words in person and online are more likely to use language patterns related to honesty, even in areas where citizens are less likely to use vulgar words socially.