November 28, 2012

“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me,” states the age-old schoolyard mantra, but recent research at the University of Northern British Columbia indicates that some insults are harder to ignore. The results of the study suggest that, at least where the English language is concerned, barbs related to the body tend to have more impact on the listener than others. These new data gives us a better understanding of how people use knowledge and experience to understand abstract concepts.

“Numbskull, butthead, and lame-brain outweigh idiot, moron, and imbecile, in terms of tripping people up a bit,” says UNBC Psychology Professor Paul Siakaluk, lead author of the study published recently in the international journal Language and Cognitive Processes. “Peoples’ personal knowledge derived from bodily experience tends to make these ‘embodied insults’ more difficult to ignore. Calling someone ‘numbskull’ conjures both pieces of knowledge of the place where the mental processes occur, and the experience of, say, a foot or leg that’s fallen asleep and is defective, at least temporarily. Whereas ‘moron’ is just a word that, while we know it’s bad, we often don’t have such a personal relationship with it so it can be easier to ignore.”

In the study, researchers first asked participants to provide all of the insults they could, excluding those deemed racist or overly-hateful. From the list of nearly 900 words and phrases generated, researchers separated those insults rated as “body-based,” such as “butthead” and “lamebrain,” and those not requiring experience of the body to understand, like “stupid.” A separate set of participants were then presented with the insults, intermixed with non-insults, in a method known as a Stroop Task. In a Stroop Task, words are presented in different coloured fonts, with instructions to name the font colour of the word or phrase while ignoring the actual meaning. The results of the study indicate that participants took significantly more time to name the colours of body-based insults. 

“Even when simply asked to name the colour of the font of a word, people find it hard to ignore the meaning of the word itself. And when those words are insults, body-based insults tended to slow people down more than other types of insults. We can take this to mean that they have more meaning attached to them; meaning derived through bodily experience. It’s also important to note that the factors influencing performance in the Stroop task are happening subconsciously,” says Dr. Siakaluk, who collaborated on the project with a researcher at the University of Calgary, and with UNBC students Holly-Anne Dalrymple and Jodie Stearns, the latter of whom received a Northern Development Bursary, and a UNBC In-Course Scholarship. UNBC’s Dean of Student Success and Enrollment Management Dr. Bill Owen also contributed to the study.

Dr. Siakaluk says that the next step in his research will involve testing embodied insults in other languages that don’t necessarily have such an abundance of body-based name-callings, such as French, which often uses more religious-based insults.

This research was supported by a grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

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Dr. Paul Siakaluk, Associate Professor, Psychology, UNBC - 250.960.6120