Media Platforms Design Team
Since the early twentieth century, asshole has been used as a marker of social deviation, referring to foolish or thoughtless people, usually men. Men sometimes use asshole to refer to the anus, as was common in the 1400s, but women rarely do. In public we hear boys and girls saying asshole by age two or three.
To figure out what words really mean, psychologists like myself first listen and record on the street to find out how words occur in conversation. In the lab, we ask study participants about swearing using questionnaires and surveys. Combining these two research methods, we arrive at truer meanings than dictionaries can provide.
When we ask people in my lab at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts to rate how frequently they hear swearwords and how offensive they are, they indicate that asshole is moderately frequent and moderately offensive. Not as offensive as fuck, but more offensive than crap. Men seem less offended by the use of asshole than women. Interestingly, lab results show that informants indicated that they hear asshole more frequently than they say it. So somebody's out there saying asshole and not admitting to it.
Are you an asshole? Or maybe you're just a prick, dick, or son of a bitch? To find out, click here.
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