I just saw a bit at Science Daily, a study by several researchers across several nations indicates that people who tend to use profanity tend to be more honest overall. An interesting quote:

“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. ”

Now a lot of you may have noticed I tend to be a little rough around the edges, but hey I have lived a rough around the edges life and do use my fair share of unapologetic profanity. Does that mean I’m more honest than the church mouse who dare not utter a forbidden word? Hell if I know  🙂  All I can say on the matter is anytime anyone tries to use their religion as a foundation to indicate their honesty, I immediately become doubly suspicious of said persons intentions.

I also noticed this at the the end of the writeup:

“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”. The Facebook users were recruited from across the United States and their responses highlight the differing views to profanity that exist between different geographical areas. For example, those in the north-eastern states (such as Connecticut, Delaware, New Jersey and New York) were more likely to swear whereas people were less likely to in the southern states (South Carolina, Arkansas, Tennessee and Mississippi).”

First things first, who knew Facebook would be a good resource for social studies? With that in mind all I can say is…fuck FB!

The other thing that pops out at me in that paragraph is the geographic trend. It suggests that my northern counterparts tend to swear more than those in the region where I live. Interesting, but not a mind shattering revelation. What does strike me as curious though is the trend for less profane utterences lies smack in the middle of the babble belt.

Correlations anyone?

https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/frankly-do-we-give-a-damn-study-finds-links-between-swearing-and-honesty