Exposure to Emphatic Swearing and The Effect on Affect: An Experimental Study

Abstract

Films use swearwords to portray scenes effectively but does the affect experienced after listening to the emphatic swear words gate keeps the evolutionary meaning attached to it irrespective of the positive context it is said. The experimental study evaluated the effects on positive affect and negative affect from short term exposure to emphatic swear words. Three independent groups were exposed to clips of emphatic swear words, feeling words and neutral words and completed self-report questionnaire called PANAS-SF. Using SPSS, A Dunnett T3 post hoc test concluded that the Positive Affect was statistically significantly lower after the exposure to emphatic swearing (p = .022) and from the exposure to neutral word group (p = .022) compared to the Feeling word group.