Old truths or fresh insights? A study of students' evaluations of proverbs

Abstract

Proverbs are often criticized for being contradictory and hence not necessarily true. The study examines two sets of contradictory proverbs: one concerned the values or disadvantages of novelty and change; in the other, contradictory pairs were arbitrarily produced through reversals (negations) of a variety of genuine proverbs. Both sets were evaluated by a group of students for quality , and by a parallel group for truth value , and originality (novelty). There were high positive correlations between truth and quality ratings, whereas originality tended to be negatively correlated with the other two. Thus, in this population, truth appears to be the most important criterion of a good proverb. However, truth scores within proverb pairs proved to be uncorrelated, so that a proverbial statement and its negation can both be considered true (or untrue). It is speculated that proverbs may be attractive as traditional (non‐novel) sayings capable of being applied to a variety of new situations.

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