Swearing makes you more persuasive, studies say

A number of studies have concluded that swearing, depending on placement and timing, can increase the effectiveness and persuasiveness of a message.

A study from 2006 showed that when the mild swear 'damn it' was included at the start or the end of a political speech, participants were influenced by the content of the speech more.

However, swearing was found to have no effect on the credibility of the speaker.

Flash forward to 2014 and a similar study found the inverse - when reading a blog post by a fictitious politician, a post with swear words improved people's impression of the author.

However, when asked, respondents reported that it didn't change the likelihood of them voting for the politician.

Researchers hypothesised that this was due to the informal context of a blog on the internet - swearing was perceived as more acceptable on an informal platform.

For instance, Twitter users were found in a recent study to swear in tweets about 64 per cent more than in everyday speech.

Another recent study found that swearing was a sign of high intelligence, so it may just be that more persuasive people are more inclined to drop a few f-bombs.

Either way seems like showing a bit of passion through some foul language makes people pay more attention.

So follow indy100 on Facebook, damn it.

More: Every British swear word has been officially ranked in order of offensiveness

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