
Study finds links between swearing and honesty - richardboegli
https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/frankly-do-we-give-a-damn-study-finds-links-between-swearing-and-honesty
======
sctb
Previously:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13412107](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13412107)

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simonswords82
I swear...actually I swear an awful lot. Sometimes I say fuck, shit and
bollocks all in one sentence. It's a big part of my vocabulary.

I find it bizarre that there are certain sounds that I can make with my mouth
that ripple through the air and upon hitting the delicate ears of another
human being will cause offence. I think people of the future will look back on
this period of time and refer to all of us as crazy for being so sensitive
when there are much, much bigger problems facing humankind.

I find it even crazier still that people write f-ck or c-cksucker and feel
that by using hyphen they're protecting these same sensitive folk from the
rudeness of the words. I mean come on. If I read f*ck what I actually say in
my head is "fuck". Not "beep" or some other auto-censor in my head.

Just two minor caveats to all of the above:

If I'm meeting somebody new, or somebody with whom I do not already have a
close relationship with (especially within the confines of business) I will
tone down but not cease my swearing. It's just polite but if they then proceed
to drop an f-bomb all bets are off and I'll revert to default swearing mode.

I also do not swear, for obvious reasons, in front of my three year old or any
children for that matter. Again, it's just common sense.

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tabeth
>> I find it bizarre that there are certain sounds that I can make with my
mouth that ripple through the air and upon hitting the delicate ears of
another human being will cause offence. I think people of the future will look
back on this period of time and refer to all of us as crazy for being so
sensitive when there are much, much bigger problems facing humankind.

>> I also do not swear, for obvious reasons, in front of my three year old or
any children for that matter. Again, it's just common sense.

You should think about this contradiction, before you say people are
sensitive, no?

~~~
wutbrodo
This doesn't seem all that inconsistent. Kids are impressionable, and pay a
much higher social cost for swearing when young (like getting disciplined at
school). By contrast, most jobs worth a damn won't be childish enough to
reprimand you for something as silly as swearing.

~~~
choward
Exactly. Other people are the main reason you have to teach your children not
to swear. Whether we like it or not, we live in a society where people get
butt-hurt about swearing and some people are appalled at kids swearing. I
don't want to have to put up with explaining myself every time my kid swears.

~~~
simonswords82
Yeah definitely this. People will judge my son for swearing but my son doesn't
have the vocabulary, experience or social skills to defend his words. It's
therefore my job to ensure that I don't leave him in a position where he can
use a word that gets him in trouble.

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richardboegli
Link to paper:
[http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/194855061668105...](http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1948550616681055)

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jawns
I read through the study about which this article reports.

The first two experiments are not very robust. They present a _plausible_
association between cursing and honesty, but it's not especially convincing.

There is so much potential for confounding variables and sampling defects
(e.g. self-reported data from Mechanical Turk users, a group who may not
represent the population at large) that you could drive a truck through it.

There are likely many other plausible explanations for the results that don't
actually depend on an association between cursing and honesty.

For instance, in the first experiment, participants were asked question such
as "Are all your habits good and desirable ones?" If they answered, "Yes," it
was considered a lie. But it might alternatively indicate several other
things, such as poor reading comprehension, paranoia about how the answers
might be used, poor self-inventory skills, etc.

As for the third state-level experiment, it's just silly. It's the sort of
thing you might see on Buzzfeed or my own site, Correlated.org. Don't take it
seriously.

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mhurron
Interestingly, swearing is discouraged here and in business in general.

~~~
roflc0ptic
Straight honesty isn't always a virtue. Plus cussing signals lots of other
things, too.

I cuss a lot at work. But I don't cuss at people. I have a coworker that says
things like "It's fucking ridiculous that X task isn't done" to the people who
are doing that task. This dude is toxic to be around. I... think I'm not?
We'll see how many of the people I'm managing still work here in a year,
though. Hopefully all of them.

So yeah. In addition to signaling honesty, cussing can be part of aggressively
damaging relationships, which is something businesses (and HN) benefit from
discouraging.

~~~
nastygibbon
> Straight honesty isn't always a virtue.

I find this an interesting statement. Would you mind providing some clear
examples of a real-life situation where honesty isn't a virtue?

I often find that lying is convenient (for the person lying) in the short term
but its damage can be far reaching and difficult to predict. If you want to
have meaningful and effective relationships (at home or at work) straight
honesty is always beneficial.

I do remember working with someone who had Alzheimer's disease. I stopped
being honest with her quite quickly as I figured that repeatedly reminding her
of her husband's death was wrong. But I can't think of any other examples of
my life when straight honesty wasn't a virtue. What about you?

~~~
AceyMan
|> Straight honesty isn't always a virtue.

>I find this an interesting statement. Would you mind providing some clear
examples of a real-life situation where honesty isn't a virtue?

Umm, certainly.

The canonical example goes something like this—

Someone knocks urgently at your door. You open it to find your best friend on
the stoop, bent over and panting from exertion.

He says there is some madman chasing him and for his safety he needs to hide
there at your place for a spell.

You welcome him in, of course, and he goes to the smallest upstairs bedroom to
lie down.

Moments later there is another knock on the door.

You open it to find someone you've never met before, only slightly less out of
breath than was your buddy.

"Hello, is <friend's name> here? I'm here to kill him, you see. My rationale
is rather not your concern, but as I'm in a bit of a rush, please do tell so
that I may finish the job or be on my way." \-- The remainder of the dialog is
left as an exercise for the reader. ;-D

/* Philosophy major, with emphasis on Kantian ethics */

~~~
nastygibbon
Yeah. This is the classic example and obviously is interesting to think about.
Some people still defend telling the truth if you're hiding Anne Frank and the
Nazis are at the door.

We might go down a rabbit hole here but your example (mad man, Anne Frank,
whatever) doesn't clearly demonstrate that honesty isn't a virtue. It's a
clear example of a real life situation, sure, but it doesn't show that telling
the truth wouldn't be virtuous.

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tabeth
Personally, I've found the following heuristic to be very accurate: if you
wouldn't do it in front of a toddler AND allow them do it themselves, then you
probably shouldn't do it, ever. There's likely no value in doing it (I
intentionally say likely and don't claim an absolute. There are exceptions,
e.g. having sex).

1\. Drinking

2\. Smoking

3\. Drugs

4\. Stealing

5\. Cheating

6\. Cursing

(needless to say, it's a long list).

~~~
Quarrelsome
> then you probably shouldn't do it, ever.

You must be fun at parties. That's a great means of clean living but as a rule
for everyone to follow I think its a touch strict. Also our culture has some
curious ideas about children and what about the world to shield them from. The
dastardly lie of Santa and the general premise that innocence should be
preserved instead of teaching them the truth of the world is one clear example
of our strange interactions with our progeny.

Often concerns about swearing especially are very redundant around children
and arguably selfish. One doesn't swear around children because they might use
the word with frequency and embarrass the parent not because there is any
detriment in the child being exposed to swearing.

~~~
tabeth
Can you explain this "you must be fun at parties" comment I see often? And I
am very fun at parties. I fail to see what cursing, drinking, smoking, etc has
to do with being a fun person.

~~~
Quarrelsome
The youthful idea is that parties are to be debauched to an extent. So being
strictly straight laced makes people less comfortable about being debauched.

Ultimately though it comes down to your post:

> then you probably shouldn't do it, ever.

assuming (somewhat, not much but a little, the "personally" at the start saves
it) that people should be like you. Conversely I feel that everyone should be
everything they want to be. Drunk, smoked, high, clean, religious, atheist,
etc. There is no "better" because there is no one objective context, there is
just different and many.

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LarryMade2
I think this is a bit of spin being put out to make the next president's
profanity seem like a good thing. Reminds me in a way of "the Emperor's New
Clothes"...

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anotherevan
“If the guy next to you is swearing like a wharfie he’s probably a
billionaire. Or, just conceivably, a wharfie.”

— Australian observation

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nrjdhsbsid
This was posted fucking yesterday

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codeddesign
And tomorrow someone will find links between depression and happiness. There
are 10's of thousands of studies published a year, in which case most are
completely unfounded or ridiculous.

With the right test group, right questions, and correctly controlled
environment, you can create almost any conclusion.

"Scientific Studies: John Oliver" :
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Rnq1NpHdmw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Rnq1NpHdmw)

"Stanford News - research Scientists and Data":
[http://news.stanford.edu/2015/11/16/fraud-science-
papers-111...](http://news.stanford.edu/2015/11/16/fraud-science-
papers-111615/)

"TWP - 64 Scientific Papers Restracted":
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-
mix/wp/2015/08/1...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-
mix/wp/2015/08/18/outbreak-of-fake-peer-reviews-widens-as-major-publisher-
retracts-64-scientific-papers/)

~~~
dang
Maybe so, but please don't post generic dismissals to HN. It takes discussion
in predictable directions, which is not interesting. Better comments find
something specific to engage with.

