Humor makes taboo words less distracting

Taboo words slowed people’s ability to identify font colors, but this distraction was reduced when the words were also funny, according to research published in Cognition & Emotion.

Taboo words—including profanity, insults, slurs, and sexual terms—can interfere with language processing. In the “taboo Stroop effect” (a variation of the standard Stroop effect, a psychological phenomenon where reading a word interferes with naming its ink color), people take longer to identify the font color of a taboo word than that of a neutral word. Researchers have generally attributed this delay to emotional arousal (a state of heightened physiological and psychological activity). Taboo words capture attention or make it harder to disengage from their meaning, leaving fewer attentional resources available for identifying their color.

However, taboo words are not exclusively offensive or unpleasant; some are also perceived as humorous. Because humor can itself be arousing but may help people shift attention more flexibly, Lise Abrams and colleagues examined whether humor would intensify or lessen the distracting effect of taboo words.

Experiment 1 involved 59 participants recruited via Prolific (an online platform used to recruit research subjects) after exclusions. Eligible participants were native English speakers living in the United States, between ages 18-29 years, and did not report color blindness, dyslexia, or ADHD. Participants saw 48 taboo and 48 neutral words, selected using previous nine-point ratings of tabooness, humor, and arousal. Each word appeared once in red, blue, green, and yellow, producing 384 randomly intermixed trials. Participants pressed one of four keys to identify the font color as quickly and accurately as possible, after completing color-key training and 40 practice trials. They also completed a demographic questionnaire.

Experiment 2 included 102 Prolific participants using the same eligibility criteria. The researchers selected 32 words divided into four groups based on the same nine-point norms: high-taboo/high-humor, high-taboo/low-humor, low-taboo/high-humor, and low-taboo/low-humor. The words were presented in separate blocks, along with neutral filler blocks, for a total of 256 trials. Participants again identified each word’s font color by keypress, and the researchers measured response time and accuracy.

In Experiment 1, participants identified the colors of taboo words more slowly than those of neutral words, demonstrating the taboo Stroop effect. This interference was strongest during the first set of trials and diminished with repeated exposure, suggesting that participants gradually became accustomed to the taboo words. Words rated as more taboo produced slower responses, but humor did not independently predict response speed or alter the effect of tabooness when taboo and neutral words were intermixed.

Experiment 2 again showed that taboo words slowed color identification. This time, however, humor changed the size of the effect: highly taboo words interfered with performance whether they were high or low in humor, but the interference was significantly smaller for the more humorous taboo words. Humor alone did not affect response times, suggesting that it did not simply make color identification easier; instead, it specifically reduced how strongly taboo content captured attention when words were presented in separate blocks.

The limited number of suitable words made it difficult to match the four word categories on characteristics such as emotional valence (the intrinsic positive or negative quality of a stimulus) and arousal. The young, US-based online sample and presentation of isolated words also limit how readily the findings can be generalized to other populations, cultures, or real-world language contexts.

Free daily newsletter

Overall, the findings suggest that people’s responses to taboo language depend not only on how offensive a word is but also on whether it is funny, revealing a more complex relationship among humor, arousal, and attention.

The research, “When an F-bomb bonks your funny bone: humor attenuates the taboo Stroop effect,” was authored by Lise Abrams, Lori E. James, Maria-Elisabeth Lootus, and Meredith A. Shafto.