(Don't) Drop the F-Bomb : Personality Judgments of Men and Women Who Swear

Abstract

In the current research, we investigated people's first impressions of men's and women's personality traits as a function of the way they use language, specifically, their use of taboo language (i.e., swear words). We hypothesized that people would form more negative first impressions of people who swear than of people who do not swear, women who swear than of men who swear, and people who swear around strangers than of people who swear around friends.