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Speaker 1: Welcome to How Stuff Works Now. I'm your host, Lauren Vogelbaum,

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Speaker 1: a researcher and writer, here at How Stuff Works every

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Speaker 1: week and bringing you three stories from our team about

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Speaker 1: the weird and wondrous advances we've seen in science, technology,

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Speaker 1: and culture. This week, researchers think they've figured out why

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Speaker 1: some sounds like chewing can be so intolerable and unrelated?

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Speaker 1: Is it ever legal to punch someone in the face?

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Speaker 1: But first, Magic editor Alison Loudermilk and our freelance writer

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Speaker 1: Kate Kirshner explore link between two personality traits that makes

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Speaker 1: leap good sense to me, honesty and use of profanity.

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Speaker 1: Let's think about bad things people do, lie, cheat, steal, swear.

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Speaker 1: Society tends to regard those first three as bad behavior,

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Speaker 1: but swearing is more nebulous. Chris warts exist because we've

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Speaker 1: separated some words into a category of profane. But while lying, cheating,

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Speaker 1: and stealing all can lead to actual injury, physical or otherwise,

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Speaker 1: swearing just violates norms. Why give it a second thought, Well,

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Speaker 1: it's important because some people make assumptions about those of

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Speaker 1: us who curse up a storm. They might even assume

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Speaker 1: that the swear has poor moral character. That's what Dr

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Speaker 1: David Stillwell told us. Stillwells a lecture at the University

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Speaker 1: of Cambridge's Judge Business School. He recently co authored a

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Speaker 1: study that looked at the relationship between profanity and honesty.

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Speaker 1: It published in the Journal of Social Psychological and Personality Science. First,

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Speaker 1: a little setup. While we often think of swearing as taboo,

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Speaker 1: which means it's just breaking those norms we mentioned earlier,

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Speaker 1: there's a school of thought that swearing is an outpouring

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Speaker 1: of genuine emotion. After all, have you ever cursed when

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Speaker 1: you felt frustrated or upset? We have, so still Will

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Speaker 1: and his colleagues set out to see if swearing was

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Speaker 1: a mark of honesty or rather a sign that a

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Speaker 1: person has other negative norm busting traits lurking behind their

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Speaker 1: softy tongue. For the first part of the study, they

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Speaker 1: asked two hundred and seventy six participants to write down

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Speaker 1: swear words they liked and commonly used, along with why

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Speaker 1: they used them. The researchers then had participants take a

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Speaker 1: commonly accepted measurement of honesty. They found that participants were

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Speaker 1: more likely to measure high on a scale of honesty

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Speaker 1: if they wrote down more used and like curse words,

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Speaker 1: and if they self reported higher use of cursing. The

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Speaker 1: researchers also noticed something interesting. People said they use profanity

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Speaker 1: to express honesty about their feelings, as opposed to trying

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Speaker 1: to insult or intimidate others. Of course, most of us

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Speaker 1: don't swear in a lab setting, so researchers went where

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Speaker 1: all real life happens the internet. Stillwell told us that

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Speaker 1: it's very difficult to study profanity because it's such a

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Speaker 1: fleeting behavior and people often don't even notice it. So

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Speaker 1: what to do? Where to go? Facebook? Of course, according

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Speaker 1: to Stillwell, Facebook status updates are a great way to

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Speaker 1: see what words people actually use when talking to their friends.

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Speaker 1: Using data for more than seventy thousand active Facebook users,

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Speaker 1: they found something interesting about those who curse more in

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Speaker 1: status updates. They're more likely to be honest. That is,

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Speaker 1: they were more likely to use words that are associated

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Speaker 1: with honesty. But the researchers still weren't done. They also

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Speaker 1: isolated the US participants of the face book study and

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Speaker 1: average their profanity scores across the states. Next, they compared

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Speaker 1: those scores to the two thousand twelve state integrity investigation.

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Speaker 1: They found that the greater the use of profanity statewide,

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Speaker 1: the higher the integrity score of the state they're from.

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Speaker 1: So there you have it. Curse away and everyone will

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Speaker 1: find you more honest. Well, hold up, The researchers only

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Speaker 1: studied the perspective of the person swearing, not the perspective

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Speaker 1: of the person hearing the swearing. But there's a silver lining.

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Speaker 1: If you ever find yourself on the receiving end of

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Speaker 1: a profanity laden tirade, you know there's a good chance

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Speaker 1: that the person is telling you what they really think.

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Speaker 1: Next up, senior editor Katherine Whitburn and our freelancer Dave

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Speaker 1: Ruse bring us an answer to a question that crossed

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Speaker 1: our minds given recent news about an assault on one

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Speaker 1: espousal of racist ideology morality aside? Is it ever legal

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Speaker 1: to punch someone in the face? Face punching in movies

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Speaker 1: and TV shows is as cliche as the angry police

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Speaker 1: chief and the one handed cliff grab. But in real life,

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Speaker 1: hauling off and clocking someone is not only a great

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Speaker 1: way to break your hand, it's usually illegal. You would

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Speaker 1: be Clint Eastwood's out there maybe wandering. Is there ever

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Speaker 1: a situation in which you are legally justified to pop

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Speaker 1: someone in their ugly mug. Michael schwartz Back, a California

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Speaker 1: criminal defense lawyer who's also an editor at the legal

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Speaker 1: website Nolo, says the answer is yes, but the punch

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Speaker 1: has to be made in self defense. In general, schwartz

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Speaker 1: Bog says, you have to not be the aggressor, and

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Speaker 1: you have to reasonably believe that forces necessary to protect

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Speaker 1: yourself from some imminent violence. You also have to use

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Speaker 1: an appropriate level of force. So here are some points

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Speaker 1: to distinguish a legal punch from an illegal. One. Number one,

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Speaker 1: you can't strike first. That would make you the aggressor.

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Speaker 1: It's hard to argue self defense when you're literally on

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Speaker 1: the attack. Number Two, you can only punt someone if

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Speaker 1: they have already taken a swing at you, or if

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Speaker 1: you believe you're about to be hit. Number Three, you

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Speaker 1: can't escalate the fight. If the drunk guy at the

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Speaker 1: bar doesn't like the way you're looking at him and

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Speaker 1: shoves you on the shoulder, you can't break a bottle

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Speaker 1: over his head, or punch him or kick him in

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Speaker 1: the goodies. You also can't use physical force against verbal attacks.

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Speaker 1: Schwartzberg says that's the most common misconception about self defense.

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Speaker 1: The whole fighting words doctrine comes from a Supreme Court

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Speaker 1: case where a man was arrested for cursing out a cop.

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Speaker 1: The man said his behavior was free expression. The court

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Speaker 1: disagreed and said that certain insults quote, by their very utterance,

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Speaker 1: inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of

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Speaker 1: the peace end quote. Schwartzberg adds that even if someone

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Speaker 1: threatens you and says they're gonna beat you up or

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Speaker 1: even kill you, the law doesn't give you the right

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Speaker 1: to slug them. Whether you get prosecuted for punching someone

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Speaker 1: out depends a lot on the police and what else

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Speaker 1: may be going on in your city. Schwartzbog says, if

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Speaker 1: you're in a big metro area, there's a scuffle at

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Speaker 1: the bar, the prosecutors are flooded by other cases, and

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Speaker 1: no one seems to be really hurt, they may not

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Speaker 1: pursue the case. But even so, you could still be

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Speaker 1: sued in civil court. If the person you punched got

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Speaker 1: a serious injury, missed work, or suffered psychological trauma from

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Speaker 1: the incident, he can sue you for damages, and you

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Speaker 1: won't see that one in the movies. Finally, this week,

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Speaker 1: staff editor E's Jeff Coat and our freelance writer Shelley

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Speaker 1: Danzy explain how a team of researchers honed in on

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Speaker 1: the systems in the brain responsible for the disorder in

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Speaker 1: which people find annoying sounds beyond annoying ms phonia. It's

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Speaker 1: dinner time with family and everyone's eating and tunning sounds

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Speaker 1: harmless enough, right, But for some hearing other people's crunching,

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Speaker 1: lip smacking, or gulping can cause anger and anxiety. Ms

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Speaker 1: Aphonia is a disorder that often evokes strong negative feelings

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Speaker 1: to certain sounds, particular things like gum chewing, pen clicking,

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Speaker 1: keyboard typing, and rattling pocket chains. Recent research published and

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Speaker 1: current biologies study the brains of people with misophonia to

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Speaker 1: see how they process emotions from certain sounds. A team

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Speaker 1: of scientists out of the UK and US evaluated the

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Speaker 1: data of twenty participants with misophonia and twenty two without.

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Speaker 1: People who don't have mesophonia can generally tune out everyday

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Speaker 1: sounds that may be a bit bothersome, but for people

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Speaker 1: with msophonia, the sensitivity comes from the pattern of the sound,

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Speaker 1: not its volume. While it's not known exactly how many

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Speaker 1: people have the condition, it can be debilitating for those

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Speaker 1: who do have it. On average, missophonia symptoms start around

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Speaker 1: age twelve, but they can appear as early as age five.

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Speaker 1: Trigger sounds often insight rage, and sometimes the sensitivity gets

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Speaker 1: so intense that actions related to specific sounds become disturbing.

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Speaker 1: Imagine a person with msophonia living with a friend, but

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Speaker 1: she doesn't want to talk because she doesn't like the

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Speaker 1: sound of her friends breathing. Sometimes people with the disorders

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Speaker 1: struggle in silence. The researchers studied measurements from m R

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Speaker 1: and f m R I, as well as physiological data

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Speaker 1: observing parts of the brain used for processing perceptions and emotions.

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Speaker 1: Participant heard trigger sounds like eating, breathing, and drinking. They

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Speaker 1: also heard unpleasant sounds like a baby's cry in person's screen,

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Speaker 1: and they heard neutral sounds like a busy cafe and rain.

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Speaker 1: Then the participants rated how annoying, triggering, or anti social

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Speaker 1: the sounds were. While the misophonic group did experience distress

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Speaker 1: typical of their disorder from the trigger sounds, the unpleasant

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Speaker 1: sounds did not produce the same response. After hearing the

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Speaker 1: trigger sounds, the mesophonic group experienced increased heart rates and

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Speaker 1: galvanic or electric skin responses. According to the authors, these

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Speaker 1: responses are consistent with mesophonic tendencies to have a fight

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Speaker 1: or flight response to trigger sounds. The misophonics in the

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Speaker 1: study also exhibited abnormal salience detection, meaning the trigger sounds

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Speaker 1: stood out more for them, so parts of the brain

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Speaker 1: involved in determining salience were more active in mesophonics than

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Speaker 1: in non mesophonics. The trigger sounds targeted the mesophonics anterior

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Speaker 1: insular cortex of the brain, a network that directs our

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Speaker 1: attention towards stimuli that are meaningful to us, along with

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Speaker 1: their parts of the brain related to processing and regulating emotion.

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Speaker 1: Participants also responded to body consciousness questions about their inner

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Speaker 1: and outer perception. The researchers found that people with mesophonia

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Speaker 1: were more aware of internal bodily sensations than those without

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Speaker 1: the condition. The researchers data doesn't show whether this unusual

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Speaker 1: internal perception is a cause or result of misophonia, but

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Speaker 1: the researchers are optimistic that further research can be directed

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Speaker 1: to quiet the brain structures related to the condition. That's

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Speaker 1: our show for this week. Thank you so much for

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Speaker 1: tuning in. Further thanks to our audio producer Dylan Fagin

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Speaker 1: and our editorial liaison Alison louder Milk. Subscribe to now

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Speaker 1: Now for more of the latest science news and send

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Speaker 1: us links to anything you'd like to hear us covered,

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Speaker 1: plus a picture of a velvet painting that you really like.

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Speaker 1: I just sort of accidentally bought one that features of Conquistadore.

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Speaker 1: You can send us an email at now podcast at

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Speaker 1: how stuff Works dot com, and of course, for lots

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Speaker 1: more stories like these, head on over to our home

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