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Alicorn comments on Open thread, Feb. 23 - Mar. 1, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion
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I remember reading somewhere that swearing has a mild painkiller effect (e.g. stub your toe and go "fuck!", less painful stubbed toe), but only if the person doing it rarely swears. I don't remember where I read this, though.
Was the control group silence or yelling non-profanities? Because saying/yelling "ow" tends to be fairly effective.
This paper compared repeating a profanity to repeating an alternate arbitrary word, not "ow." (first hit searching "swearing pain" on google scholar)
I don't remember anything else about the thing I read.
It may only be personal, but in my experience it is the opposite, because that is like telling yourself "oh, how terrible this is," which of course does not make you feel better, but worse.
If I recall correctly, it increases tolerance for pain which isn't quite the same as "mild painkiller." The experiment measured how long you could submerge your hand in freezing water, which participants who were allowed to swear could do for a longer period of time.