Walked past my son watching the Mythbusters episode: No Pain, No Gain.  It includes 3 studies of pain tolerance/perception using holding your hand in ice water as the pain stimulus.  The one that really got my attention is the swearing one — does cursing out loud increase one’s tolerance for pain?

They found a positive result, but I hope my research methods class will be able to identify ways in which their methodology was not ideal.

Mythbusters: No Pain, No Gain, Part 1
(ttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPEaoone8j4)

Mythbusters: No Pain, No Gain, Part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bL02CneOPE4&feature=related

(I would have liked to link directly to the Discovery Channel website for the episode, but they seem to make extra footage available, but not the actual episode as far as I can tell).

The source of the hypothesis appears to be this report, which I think is pretty solid on methodology (note: I had to log in through the University library to get the full report, NeuroReport doesn’t give away content for free).

http://journals.lww.com/neuroreport/abstract/2009/08050/swearing_as_a_response_to_pain.4.aspx