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PubMed2004

Health proverbs.

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Aphorisms and Proverbs as Topic↗
PubMed2002

The adaptiveness of selection, optimization, and compensation as strategies of life management: evidence from a preference study on proverbs.

Proverbs were used to examine whether laypeople's conceptions of or preferences for life-management strategies are consistent with the model of selection, optimization, and compensation (SOC model). The SOC model posits that there are three fundamental processes of life management: selection, optimization, and compensation. In two studies (N = 64; N = 131), young (19-32 years) and older adults (59-85 years) were asked to match proverbs to sentence stems indicative of life-management situations. Of the proverbs, half reflected one component of SOC and half alternative, non-SOC life-management strategies. SOC-related and alternative proverbs were matched on familiarity, understandability, and meaningfulness. Two main results were obtained: Young and older adults chose proverbs reflecting SOC (a) more frequently and (b) faster than alternative proverbs. Study 3 (N = 60, 19-32 year-old participants) ruled out that these results were due to an artifact resulting from a stronger, purely semantic relationship of the specific sentence stems with the SOC-related proverbs. Studies 4 (N = 48 younger and older adults) and 5 (N = 20 younger adults) were conducted to test discriminant validity. In contrast with tasks involving long-term goal orientation and success, there were no preferences for SOC-related proverbs for life contexts involving relaxation or leisure. Taken together, results of these studies indicate that individuals, when asked to choose between alternative proverbs characterizing ways of managing life, prefer SOC-related proverbs.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed1988

Familiarity with proverbs and performance of a black population on Gorham's Proverbs Test.

The Gorham Proverbs Test was administered to 278 black participants residing in a large metropolitan area in Southern California. Respondents were also asked to indicate whether they were familiar with each of the 40 proverbs in the test. Scores were significantly affected by respondents' ages, education, and perceived childhood socioeconomic status. Familiarity with a proverb increased the probability of its correct interpretation. Familiarity of proverbs and attempts to interpret them were significantly associated, that is, respondents tended not to attempt interpretation of unfamiliar proverbs. The number of familiar proverbs per test was not significantly associated with respondents' test scores. The mean Abstract score obtained in this study was comparable to mean scores previously reported in the literature, suggesting that ethnic differences do not significantly affect performance on the Proverbs Test.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1995

What proverb understanding reveals about how people think.

The ability to understand proverbial sayings, such as a rolling stone gathers no moss, has been of great interest to researchers in many areas of psychology. Most psychologists assume that understanding the figurative meanings of proverbs requires various kinds of higher order cognitive abilities. The authors review the findings on proverb interpretation to examine the question of what proverb use and understanding reveals about the ways normal and dysfunctional individuals think. The widely held idea that failure to provide a figurative interpretation of a proverb necessarily reflects a deficit in specialized abstract thinking is rejected. Moreover, the ability to correctly explain what a proverb means does not necessarily imply that an individual can think abstractly. Various empirical evidence, nonetheless, suggests that the ability to understand many proverbs reveals the presence of metaphorical schemes that are ubiquitous in everyday thought.

Aphorisms and Proverbs as Topic↗
PubMed2006

Proverb preferences across cultures: dialecticality or poeticality?

Peng and Nisbett (1999) claimed that members of Asian cultures show a greater preference than Euro-Americans for proverbs expressing paradox (so-called dialectical proverbs; e.g., Too humble is half proud). The present research sought to replicate this claim with the same set of stimuli used in Peng and Nisbett's Experiment 2 and a new set of dialectical and nondialectical proverbs that were screened to be comparably pleasing in phrasing. Whereas the proverbs were rated as more familiar and (in Set 1) more poetic by Chinese than by American participants, no group differences were found in relation to proverb dialecticality. Both the Chinese and Americans in our study rated the dialectical proverbs from Peng and Nisbett's study as more likable, higher in wisdom, and higher in poeticality than the nondialectical proverbs. For Set 2, both groups found the dialectical proverbs to be as likable, wise, and poetic as the nondialectical proverbs. When poeticality was covaried out, dialectical proverbs were liked better than nondialectical proverbs across both stimulus sets by the Chinese and the Americans alike, and when wisdom was covaried out, the effect of dialecticality was reduced in both sets and groups. Our findings indicate that caution should be taken in ascribing differences in proverb preferences solely to cultural differences in reasoning.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1976

Proverbs and psychoanalysis.

Proverbs have much to teach the psychoanalyst. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the clinical usefulness of viewing certain proverbs as analogous to typical dreams, to discuss some implications of the affinities between proverbs, riddles, and typical dreams in the context of applied psychoanalysis, and to view the proverb as stemming from the same common matrix as dreams, myths, symptoms, and folklore.

Anxiety, Castration↗
PubMed1976

The influence of instructional set on schizophrenic vs. organic concreteness.

36 male patients (12 schizophrenic, 12 organic, and 12 neurotic), age 19-57, each took two forms of the Gorham Proverbs test under two different instructional sets. It was hypothesized that for schizophrenics, a higher level of abstraction would be obtained on the proverbs task when the instructions required less personal involvement of the patient than when a more personalized set was used; whereas the performance of organic and neurotic patients would not be affected by the variation in instructional set. The results indicate that instructional set does significantly alter the concreteness of the schizophrenic's response to proverbs, but has little effect on the responses of the other two groups.

Adult↗
PubMed1998

Utility of proverb interpretation measures with cardiac transplant candidates.

To assess metaphorical understanding and proverb interpretation in cardiac transplant candidates, the neuropsychological assessment records of 22 adults with end-stage cardiac disease under consideration for transplantation were analyzed. Neuropsychological tests consisted of the Controlled Oral Word Association Test, Halstead Category Test, Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure Test (Copy), Trial Making Test, and summed scores for the proverb items of the WAIS-R Comprehension subtest. Analysis showed that the group tended to interpret proverbs literally. Proverb scores were significantly associated with scores on the Similarities and Picture Arrangement subtests of the WAIS-R. There was a moderate negative association between number of reported heart attacks and Proverb scores. The need for brief yet robust assessments including measures of inferential thinking and conceptualization in transplant candidates are highlighted.

Adult↗
PubMed2000

How adolescents comprehend unfamiliar proverbs: the role of top-down and bottom-up processes.

Typically achieving students who were 12, 15, and 18 years old (n = 150) participated in this investigation. The goal was to determine the extent to which students' prior knowledge of the nouns in unfamiliar proverbs would be associated with their ability to comprehend the expressions and how the relationship between word knowledge and proverb comprehension might change during the developmental period from late childhood to late adolescence. Proverbs containing concrete nouns (e.g., "Two captains will sink a ship") (concrete proverbs) and those containing abstract nouns (e.g., "Envy is destroyed by true friendship") (abstract proverbs) were presented in a multiple-choice task designed to examine comprehension of the expressions. Knowledge of the relevant semantic features of each noun was examined in a separate multiple-choice task. Word knowledge was found to be associated with proverb comprehension in all groups--and particularly so in the case of abstract proverbs. The results support a model of proverb comprehension in adolescents that includes bottom-up in addition to top-down processes.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2002

Extending the search for folk personality constructs: the dimensionality of the personality-relevant proverb domain.

College students (95 men and 264 women) rated how well 211 familiar proverbs described their behavior and beliefs. A factor analysis of these data yielded 7 major dimensions; many of the factors were similar to recognized lexical personality factors. Big Five Conscientiousness and Neuroticism were each strongly associated with a single proverb dimension (interpreted as Restraint and Enjoys Life, respectively). Big Five Agreeableness, Extraversion, and Intellect/Imagination were all associated with several proverb dimensions. Agreeableness was most strongly associated with proverb dimensions representing Machiavellian behavior and strong Group Ties, and both Extraversion and Intellect showed particularly notable associations with an Achievement Striving dimension. The 2 remaining proverb dimensions, which represented a belief that Life is Fair and an attitude of Cynicism, could not be accounted for by the Big Five.

Aphorisms and Proverbs as Topic↗
PubMed1993

Proverb familiarity and the mental status examination.

Asking patients to interpret proverbs is a traditional method of assessing abstract thinking ability. Familiarity with a proverb increases the likelihood of interpreting it correctly. Differences in proverb familiarity among patients could lead clinicians to incorrectly conclude that a patient is thinking concretely, and thus to underestimate the patient's cognitive ability. Clinicians should be aware of this possibility when assessing patients from different racial and gender groups. The authors surveyed 229 Afro-American and 104 Caucasian high school students to determine their familiarity with 25 proverbs. Thirty-seven clinicians were also asked to rate their patients' familiarity with the same proverbs. The authors found no differences in proverb familiarity between the black and white students or the male and female students. Clinicians' beliefs about proverb familiarity in their patients were found to be inaccurate.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1997

Proverb explanation through the lifespan: a developmental study of adolescents and adults.

A proverb explanation task consisting of 24 low-familiarity expressions was administered to 353 individuals ranging in age from 13 through 79 years. Half the proverbs were composed of concrete nouns ("A caged bird longs for the clouds") and half were composed of abstract nouns ("Humility often gains more than pride"). The task was designed to examine how patterns of language growth in adults compare to those observed in adolescents. It also served as a tool for examining the "metasemantic hypothesis," the view that complex semantic units, such as proverbs, are learned through active analysis of the words they contain. Performance on the task improved markedly during adolescence and into early adulthood. It reached a plateau during the 20s, remained stable during the 30s, 40s, and 50s, and began a slight decline during the 60s that reached statistical significance during the 70s. Concrete proverbs were easier to explain than abstract proverbs for adolescents and for adults in their 20s, but the two proverb types did not differ for adults in their 30s and older. Thus, the metasemantic hypothesis was supported for adolescents and young adults. For the adults, performance on the proverb explanation task was related to the number of years of formal education they had completed.

Adolescent↗