Dr Michelle Dickinson: nanotechnologist on a new study revealing bad grammar can trigger a negative physical stress reaction

Scientist have finally proven for the first time what many of us have been feeling for years - hearing other people use bad grammar can trigger a negative physical stress reaction!

The study published in the Journal of Neurolinguistics involved 41 English speaking adults being exposed to 160 different speech samples spoken by different voices. Each sample contained a different number of grammatical errors. As the adults listened to the speech samples, their cardiovascular activity and blood volume pulse were measured. After the recordings, they were also asked to fill out a survey.

Heart rate variability is controlled by the primitive autonomic nervous system – the same thing that controls our fight or flight mechanism.

The study found a direct correlation between the irregularity of the adults heartbeats with the number of errors in the speech meaning the adults became more stressed, the more errors they heard within a sample.

So, the next time you feel angry or annoyed when you hear poor grammar, know that your body is unconsciously responding in a physical way to what it’s listening to and your stress levels are elevating.

If you want to see how strongly you feel about bad grammar – below is an example of the speech text used in the study:

“I think that culture is one of the areas most affected by a globalisation and it's hard to say whether it is the positive or negative impact. I think that thanks to a globalisation, people all around the world listen to same music, watch the same movies, and read same books. They can discuss the same issues with each other, and understand each other better, because they know what they are talking about.”

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