Collection | Published 2019
A psychological method of analysis has been developed (Detje, 1996) and will be presented in order to show which psychological mechanisms the proverbs use to reach their goal of giving help (or advise) for human action regulation and human action organization. Some examples will be given to show which psychological insight there is inside the proverbs. Comer's theory of human action organization (e.g. Dorner, 1990, 1991) is used in this first analysis and compared with a lot of proverbs taken from Simrock, 1846. It can be shown that the proverbs have a much' differentiated "'knowledge" about human action organization and errors people make while planning and acting; even in complex and uncertain situations. Proverbs are "Guides to Right Behavior". This also means that a lot ofpsychologists' ideas of action organization are already included in "grandma'swisdom", although the proverbs use (of course) a quite different language.11 Sincepsychologists have used proverbs mainly for testing and differentiating groups of persons it will be very interesting to have an exchange between paremiologists and psychologists about the psychological significance of the wisdom in the proverbs.