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March 21, 2014
Q. Even if your Mom didn't go in much for profanity, on what occasion might she have dropped her guard and let 'er rip?
A. When she was giving birth to you, says psychologist Richard Stephens of Keele University, England, as reported by Tiffany O'Callaghan in New Scientist magazine. The brain processes swear words differently from more genteel vocabulary, and when an expletive is fired at us, it can feel like a slap to the face. “It's almost like a physical act,” adds psychologist Timothy Jay at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts in North Adams, and that visceral feeling might explain why we swear when we're in pain.
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