PROFILE BOOKS, NOVEMBER 2017It was pain that got me hooked on swearing.
I was working as a computational neuroscientist, based in London’s Science Museum, and I was looking for interesting experiments to demonstrate to visitors. I read about a study that needed no more than a stopwatch, a bowl of ice water, and volunteers who were willing to keep their hands submerged as long as possible in the freezing water—once while saying a neutral word, and once while swearing.
My version of the study was due to be run at a late-night event that included access to a bar, so I already knew that our results would be a curiosity at best. But in the original experiment, carried out under more-controlled (and less alcohol-soaked) conditions by Richard Stephens at Keele University in 2009, the results were nevertheless ...
