2023 Author: Melissa Kennedy | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-05-24 13:57
An international team of scientists from Holland, USA, UK and Hong Kong concluded that addiction to the use of obscene language is a sign of increased honesty.
In the first study, 276 volunteers were asked to write down the swear words they use, and then asked them to take a test based on Eysenck's modified scale of lying, which includes 12 questions, positive answers to which determine a person's tendency to lie. According to the results, experts found that the least inclined to lie are those whose list of swear words was longer.
The second study analyzed about 74,000 pages of English-speaking Facebook users. Here, the honesty of users was analyzed on the basis that people prone to lying are less likely to use expressions associated with frankness, for example, personal pronouns, and are more inclined to use verbs of movement and more impersonal constructions, such as worry, fear, worry, moving, walking towards and so on.
“If you’re trying to consistently follow social norms rather than say what you think, then you’re usually telling people what they want to hear. In this case, you cannot by default be honest with others. Swearing is often inappropriate, but it is can also be evidence that someone is telling you their honest opinion. Such a person is less likely to play with the truth, "says one of the study's authors, Professor David Stillwell of the University of Cambridge.