2 ‘Rude’ Habits That Subtly Signal High Intelligence, By A Psychologist

InnovationScience2 ‘Rude’ Habits That Subtly Signal High Intelligence, By A PsychologistByMark Travers,Contributor.Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. I write about relationships, personality, and everyday psychology.Follow AuthorJun 15, 2026, 08:30am EDTWe’re taught that politeness is a virtue. But some of the habits we reflexively flag as rude turn out to be unusual markers of a well-functioning mind.gettyMost of us have been on the receiving end of someone who swears a little too freely or who has a habit of cutting us off mid-sentence to jump in with their own thoughts. Our social instincts are quick to label both as failures — of manners, of self-control, of basic respect. Etiquette culture has long operated on the assumption that restraint, careful word choice and patient turn-taking are proxies for intelligence and good character.Psychology, it turns out, doesn’t entirely agree. A growing body of research suggests that certain behaviors we’ve been socialized to treat as conversational failures are, under the right conditions, associated with higher cognitive ability. This doesn’t mean rudeness is something to celebrate. But it does mean that our social snap judgments are sometimes getting the neuroscience wrong. Here are two habits worth reconsidering.Habit 1: Using Profanity Fluently And StrategicallyAn assumption deeply embedded in social convention is that people who swear frequently do so because they lack the vocabulary to express themselves any other way. But this tidy story is empirically backwards.In a 2022 preregistered study published in the Journal of Individual Differences, researchers Anna-Kaisa Reiman and Mitch Earleywine at the University at Albany recruited 266 undergraduates and administered a battery of tests measuring swear word fluency, general verbal fluency, vocabulary size and Big Five personality traits. Their central finding cuts against the stereotype cleanly: swear word fluency does not arise from a...