The long and short of taboo words

Canadians thinking of talking dirty during sex might want to reconsider, given a new study's discovery that prurient language causes people to underestimate how long something lasts.

When researchers displayed taboo sexual words on a computer screen, onlookers consistently misjudged the amount of time that had passed — an effect attributed to the shocking language's capacity to stop them dead in their tracks. Time was perceived by participants to have flown by because their minds were focused on the explicit words as opposed to the ticking of their internal clocks.