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Sabrina Philippe (Psychologist)
According to a Dutch study, receiving insults and negative comments against him would create concrete emotional damage at the level of the brain.
Can words hurt? This is often what is said when someone comes to you with the intention of harming you, but does this mean that insults have a real impact on the brain? This is the question that a team of Dutch researchers wanted to answer by subjecting 79 participants to a series of insults or compliments and analyzing their reactions. Their findings were published July 18 in the journal Frontiers in Communication.
The insults received like mini-slaps in the face
Thus, the 79 participants, equipped with electroencephalography (EEG) and skin conductance electrodes, were subjected to a series of insults, compliments or neutral comments, sometimes associated directly with their name, sometimes with another. The first conclusions show “a very fast and stable capture of emotional attention” when it comes to an insult, even in case of repetition. “Overall, our results suggest that slurs give lexical ‘mini slaps’, such that strongly negative words read by a participant automatically attract attention” soraise the study.
Research has also revealed that our brain’s sensitivity to negative words is stronger and faster than that induced by positive words. In short, we are more sensitive to insults and we remember insults more than compliments.
Good in your body, good in your head!
The power of words recognized by law
Asked about the subject, Sabrina Philippe, psychologist, does not seem surprised by this physical observation. “Besides, from a point of view of the law, when we started to recognize and punish the influence, to recognize moral harassment, verbal abuse, it is that we have already recognized that words can hurt sometimes as much as the gestures” she confirms.
As for the difference made between insults and compliments, which do not attract as much attention as the other, the psychologist also provides an interesting explanation: “The fact is that we have all, more or less, I insist on the nuance, experienced a little mistreatment, a personal injury, little sentences that made us suffer in the past. If these negative sentences were able to forge our critical sense, it is an experience that immediately resonates when listening to a sentence that is not really sympathetic”.
So many good reasons to be careful that our words do not become evils.