Bad grammar is so maddening it activates the ‘fight or flight’ response within the human body, study finds

For many, bad grammar can be maddening.

Now experts have discovered that this actually causes a physical reaction and even affects the heart rate.

Examples of bad grammar can include mixing up tenses within a sentence, confusing the singular with the plural, using double negatives or misusing the comma.

Examples of pet peeves include “We don’t need teaching,” “I ate porridge for breakfast and drink milk,” or “Anna and Mike go skiing.”

Researchers from the University of Birmingham recruited 41 English-speaking British adults and listened to 40 samples of English speech, half of which contained grammatical errors.

For many, bad grammar can be maddening. Now experts have discovered that this actually causes a physical reaction – and even affects heart rate (stock image)

They recorded the participants’ heart rate variability (HRV) while they listened to the excerpts.

HRV captures the time between successive heartbeats.

These periods tend to be variable during a relaxed state but become more regular when a person is stressed.

The analysis revealed that the more errors a person hears, the more irregular their heartbeat becomes, which is a sign of stress.

The researchers said that grammatical errors appear to activate the “fight or flight” response within the human body.

They explained that knowledge of the first language is largely implicit, as most people do not need to sit down and study to learn their mother tongue.

This may mean that our bodies react to bad grammar even if we cannot identify what exactly is wrong with the sentence.

Professor Dagmar Devjak, lead researcher on the study, said: “Your knowledge of your first language is largely implicit, meaning that learning your mother tongue did not require you to sit down and study, and using it did not require much, if any, thinking.” .

“It also means that you will find it difficult to identify what is right or wrong in a sentence, and worse yet, explain why, especially if you have no formal training in the language.”

The results, published in the Journal of Neurolinguistics, said: “The model confirmed that there is a cardiovascular response to grammatical violations.

“We recorded a statistically significant reduction in heart rate…in response to stimuli containing errors.

“The observation that linguistic knowledge can be detected using cardiovascular measures highlights a new dimension of the complex relationship between physiology and cognition and opens new paths to explore this link.”