Swearing generally resulted in poorer impressions being formed. Female timeline owners who did not swear were considered particularly attractive. Men perceived female timeline owners who swore as more physically attractive, but less task attractive

Westrop, Sophie, Emily Nordmann, Gillian Bruce, and Graham G Scott. 2018. “F*c*book: Swearing Impacts Impression Formation on Social Media”. PsyArXiv. January 2. psyarxiv.com/wvcs

Abstract: The language we use can influence the impressions others form of us. Swearing is a taboo linguistic category often used offline with striking and often gender-specific results. Swear words are employed in informal online contexts such as social networks but their impact in such domains is unclear. To investigate the effect of swearing in online impression formation we asked 276 participants to view Facebook timelines containing swearing or no swearing, and form impressions of the timeline owners on dimensions of attractiveness, professionalism, and credibility. All data and code is available at https://osf.io/acpgw/. Swearing generally resulted in poorer impressions being formed. Female timeline owners who did not swear were considered particularly attractive. Men perceived female timeline owners who swore as more physically attractive, but less task attractive. Results are discussed in relation to online impression formation and employability.