The Relationship Between Punishment History and Skin Conductance Elicited During Swearing

Abstract

Despite its theoretical importance, the effect of past punishment on verbal behavior is often overlooked in research due to the difficulty of measuring it. The present study explores the relationship between physiological arousal in humans and swearing; a behavior likely to have been punished in the typical conditioning history of an individual. Participants' skin conductance was measured as they read aloud a list of words containing swear words, emotionally salient words, and neutral words. The association between SCR measurements and participants' scores on questionnaires on previous punishment for swearing was then analyzed. Findings suggest that people have significantly higher physiological arousal when saying swear words than neutral words, and that this arousal is higher for participants who have previously received more frequent punishment for swearing, according to self-report.

Sentence processing of taboo words: Evidence from eyetracking

“…Previous research suggests that individual differences can alter physiological responses to taboo words (Jay, 1980) such as personality traits (Stelmack & Mandelzys, 1975), gender (Nothman, 1962), childhood punishment for swearing (Tomash & Reed, 2013), and even the behavior of the experimenter (Hicks, 1970). It is possible that such a variable is currently influencing reading time, but we cannot observe it.…”

“…New examples of aversive words can even be created via classical conditioning by pairing an electric shock with a neutral word (Staats, Staats, & Crawford, 1962). Interestingly, most people remember being reprimanded or physically punished as children for swearing (Jay, King, & Duncan, 2006) and it has been suggested that the degree of childhood punishment for swearing is positively correlated with one's autonomic reaction to taboo words (Tomash & Reed, 2013). Perhaps taboo words are another example of an aversive word, but one in which the aversive status is agreed upon by the vast majority of a population.…”

Conditioning a Discriminated Eyeblink Response to the “Truth Value” of Statements

“…These results from the 100% reinforcement blocks replicate those noted in Experiment 1, and show a clear effect of conditioning, irrespective of the truth-value of the statement. That suggests that there is nothing intrinsic to these negative statements that would provoke an eye-blink response, such as avoidance of a previously punished statement (see Tomash and Reed, 2013b). Rather, conditioning was noted to the truth value of the statement.…”

“…In contrast, little research has examined the ways in which 'truthvalue' may serve as an independent stimulus for behavior (see Grant, 1972) that is, how and when does 'truth' become associated with a particular behavior (DePaulo, Lindsay, Malone, Muhlenbruck, Charlton, and Cooper, 2003;Vrij, 2000). Understanding this topic has implications for theoretical aspects of psychology (e.g., Frith, 2003), and it has recently been addressed through the application of conditioning frameworks (e.g., Plumb, Stewart, Dahl, and Lundgren, 2009;Tomash and Reed, 2013b). There may, of course, be a number of 'naturally occurring' processes responsible for the generation of reactions to the truth value of a statementfor example, social processes and factors may be involved however, it is certainly been demonstrated that the past conditioning history of the individual does appear to play a role in this process (Tomash and Reed, 2013b).…”

“…As argued in Skinner's Verbal Behavior (Skinner, 1957), the amount of conditioning required to bring an operant response under the discriminative control of such an abstract property can be extensive (see Sundberg and Michael, 2001, for a discussion in a different context), sometimes requiring prolonged training under different situations, and using different stimuli containing the same property of 'truth-value' (Staats, 1961). Such extensive conditioning may be arranged by the verbal community (Barnes-Holmes, Barnes-Holmes, and Cullinan, 2000;Skinner, 1957), as it is of practical value to the community to apply such an operant contingency (Schlinger, 2008;Tomash & Reed, 2013b). However, such extensive exposure to classical contingencies relating an abstract stimulus, such as truth, with a particular response would be unlikely in the normal environment of an individual.…”