Apparently My Foul Mouth Means I’m a Saint. And I’ve Got The F*ing Proof.

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Science Redeems My Four Letter Words

In 2017, when I decided to quit my corporate job and become a teacher, my friends immediately staged an intervention. Are you sure, are you having a midlife crisis, how will you manage all this? More interestingly, some of them asked me point blank. But, how can you? You’re incapable of teaching young kids, your dictionary is so lousy.

Fair enough, I thought. After all, I’ve what other teachers might consider a potty mouth. You see, back in the day at a parent teacher conference for my 2nd grader, his teacher had told me that he was using words like “H-E-double toothpicks”. And that was my first foray into the world of “avoid four letter words like your life depended on it”.

So if I had to survive in the teaching business without facing the ire of parents for being a bad influence on their kids, I had to clean up my language.

Well, without going into too many details, I’m happy to report that I thrived as a teacher (and taught in 25 countries across Zoom sessions since the COVID) and didn’t slip up in anyway in any of my classes. When homework was not turned in, I simply whispered to myself with an “are you kidding me?!” and let it be.

Now, even though I’m no longer a teacher, this study I read about on Adam Grant’s tweet feels f*ing awesome!

Conducted by Gilad Feldman, Huiwen Lian, Michal Kosinski & David Stillwell, this study is literally called, “Frankly, We Do Give a Damn: The Relationship Between Profanity and Honesty”. You can find it HERE. 

I read through this just so I can prove what a saint I am, so here it is.

Swearing Is Caring

The tests were conducted in different ways. They did a lab survey of 276 participants to measure self-reported profanity use and lying on a scale. They conducted linguistic analysis of real‐life status updates on Facebook and looked at profanity rate in posts for indicators of honesty/deception. Across the US, they compared state-level profanity rates with integrity/honesty indexes for those states.

From these tests, they found out that people who curse more actually lie less and are more truthful.

The authors suggest one possible explanation. Profanity may signal unfiltered, genuine expression rather than filtered, performative politeness. Meaning those who swear more might feel less need to hide or misrepresent themselves.

And wait, they’ve also laid out the limitations for any of the “what about–ers” in the crowd. Correlation doesn’t equal causation, and context matters, there will always be people who are rude and might be lying.

So there you go, if you’ve been ignoring those who you think are rude, turns out they’re just being radically honest. Cursing is not a symbol of low class but high authenticity. Now, every time I mutter, “Oh for f*’s sake”, you know I’m just having one of those research-backed episodes of candor. LOL

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve to go polish my halo. 

Some of you right now

Additional Reading

Since the internet never disappoints, I have to mention some of the gems of replies to Grant’s tweet.

• Oliver GB: “People who swear are just more comfortable being themselves. They’re not putting on some fake polite act to impress others. Raw honesty beats sugar-coated BS every day.”
• Hari Raghavan: “F*ing knew it.”
• Chris Koerner: “Who says you can’t be both authentic and low class?”
• Liza Lockwood: “The sailor side of me really likes this paper…”
• Aarti Shahani: “Well that’s a f*ing relief.”
• Jeremy Nguyen: “What’s the relationship between honesty and class? Manners often exist to avoid offense – so it’s a tradeoff between brutal honesty and consideration.”
• Jim Knight: “Authenticity isn’t just unfiltered candor – it’s acting in alignment with your principles.”

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Frankly, We Do Give a Damn: The Relationship Between Profanity and Honesty

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