If you’re someone who curses like a sailor, a new study has come out that will come as very good news to you!

A new study found that people who curse make better friends and also are smarter and have better vocabularies than soft-spoken people. Some psychologists have even argued that cursing has many therapeutic benefits that make it a good thing.

“Curse words have been only of brief passing interest to psychologist and linguists. The absence of research on emotional speech has produce theories of language that are polite but inaccurate. Curse words are words we are not supposed to say; hence, curse words themselves are powerful,” explained psychologist Timothy Jay from Massachusettes College of Liberal Arts in his study titled “Why We Curse: A Neuro-Psycho-Social Theory of Speech.”

Jay worked on the new study “The Pragmatics of Swearing” with psychologist Kristi Janschewitz from Marist College, and they concluded that those who curse are likely to be better friends than those who don’t because they are more honest and genuine. Those who curse are also better at expressing their feelings than those who don’t.

“People who use taboo words understand their general expressive content as well as nuanced distinctions that must be drawn to use slurs appropriately,” Jay and Janschewitz’s study states. “The ability to make nuanced distinction indicates the presence of more rather than less linguistic knowledge.”

“The NPS [neuro-psycho-social] Theory overcomes these earlier shortcomings by viewing language in a more comprehensive fashion that includes offensive speech (i.e., cursing) as an essential element in speech comprehension and production processes,” Jay’s study concluded. “The result is a more realistic view of human language.”

Does this come as a surprise to you? Let us know in the comments section.