#11849. “Don’t praise the day before the sunset”: Paremiology in the study of depressiveness

July 2026publication date
Proposal available till 27-05-2025
4 total number of authors per manuscript0 $

The title of the journal is available only for the authors who have already paid for
Journal’s subject area:
Cultural Studies;
Anthropology;
Sociology and Political Science;
Social Psychology;
Places in the authors’ list:
place 1place 2place 3place 4
FreeFreeFreeFree
2350 $1200 $1050 $900 $
Contract №11849.1 Contract №11849.2 Contract №11849.3 Contract №11849.4
1 place - free (for sale)
2 place - free (for sale)
3 place - free (for sale)
4 place - free (for sale)

Abstract:
Psychology and psychiatry are in a constant search for an adequate model of affective disorders. Psychology has classified depression as a mood disorder, but a growing literature links mental disorders with socioculturally relevant ways in which people experience and express distress. With this study, we link depression with proverbs as omnipresent narrative structures and mini-theories that help people interpret reality and categorize personal experience. Proverbs are omnipresent narrative structures that describe, explain, and prescribe human behavior. Our tenet is that proverbs may also reflect people’s mental states and attitudes by conveying different levels of optimism versus pessimism. We evidence empirically that proverbs convey optimistic and pessimistic attitudes and, thus, have the capacity to capture peoples’ mental states. Moreover, we show that this capacity is limited for people with high depressiveness. Finally, we discuss how proverbial thinking links collective experience and wisdom imprinted in proverbs with an individual’s mental states, which has important research and practical implications.
Keywords:
Culture; Depression; optimism/pessimism; paremiology; proverb

Contacts :
0