What does social psychology have in common with folk wisdom How does social psychology differ from folk wisdom?

4.2 Final Remarks

Folk wisdom has long invoked the notion of willpower as a key ingredient for successful self-control and self-discipline, suggesting that energy is consumed in such acts of volition. Psychological theory dispensed with energy models for decades. Skepticism and even hostility toward explaining self-regulation in energy terms are to be expected. Yet the alternative versions generally have large conceptual gaps that cannot be filled without subtly reintroducing the idea of depleted energy resources, or at least resources of some sort. The traditional folk notion of willpower as a limited supply of energy that fuels effort and virtue has proven surprisingly durable, and if updated with new findings, it still forms the basis for a promising scientific account of human volition.

c Magpies.

Folk wisdom has often credited corvids with an acute sense of smell (e.g., Gurney, 1992), but surprisingly little behavioral work has been done on them. Possibly this is because the species so far examined have been found to have relatively small olfactory lobes (relative olfactory bulb size < 0.06: Bang and Cobb, 1968).

Buitron and Nuechterlein (1985) reason that if corvids do use olfaction to find food, this ability is likely to be most highly developed in carrioneating species that cache food. In one experiment, they hid equal numbers of odorous caches (containing rotten chicken or bread soaked in cod liver oil) and control caches (containing fresh chicken or plain bread) in an area frequented by foraging black-billed magpies Pica pica. The birds discovered significantly more of the scented caches. A second, more systematic experiment showed a significantly higher discovery rate of caches containing either raisins or suet plus cod liver oil by comparison with caches containing raisins or suet only.

Generalized reciprocity correlations

Folk wisdom claims that we get what we give, and what goes around comes around. These folk sayings assume that people will respond to a person similarly to the way the person responds to them, and surely this is possible. However, there is also the possibility that people with get something different from what they give others. If one behaves in a consistently aggressive manner with others, they may not reciprocate aggression but may simply ignore and avoid the aggressor. In the SRM, these possibilities are estimable by correlating actor and partner effect estimates. As is true of any correlation, there are three possibilities for generalized reciprocity correlations: positive, negative, or independence.

With positive generalized reciprocity, the responses that one consistently emits to others are positively related to responses elicited from them. As an example, consider aggressive verbal behavior. If one is verbally aggressive toward others, this may elicit verbal aggression from others. If one's actor effect in aggression is low, then others' aggression to them may also be low. However, if one is aggressive with others they may avoid the offensive individual and refuse to respond tit for tat. The actor-partner correlation, also called generalized reciprocity, quantifies these possibilities. When one's general aggression begets similar aggression from others, a form of positive reciprocity, the actor-partner correlation will be positive. If an actor's consistent aggression intimidates others, as occurs with bullying, the partners may cower in fear, and will result in actor-partner correlations for aggression that are zero. Aggressive actors may elicit nonaggressive responses from others in an attempt to diffuse the situation, and in this case the actor-partner correlation will be negative.

2 What Money can Buy: the Personal and Social Significance of Money

Although folk wisdom claims that money does not make happy, findings point to an overall low, but significantly positive relationship (about R = .15 to R = .20, see Furnham and Argyle 1998). Not surprisingly, the prediction of happiness from economic resources improves if other indicators of wealth besides income are also considered. Pointing to the importance of social comparison processes, relative income is more important than its absolute level, because people define themselves as wealthy or poor with regard to others. In countries with high poverty rates and extreme income differences like India or Brazil, the relation between happiness and income is substantially stronger. Across 55 nations, the correlation between income and happiness reaches about R = .50 (Diener et al. 1995). Finally, increases in income during prosperous periods have a positive influence on citizens' well-being, whereas income loss during depression periods have the opposite effect. However, the effects of changes in income on changes in satisfaction do not seem to be long-term. People adapt to higher as well as lower levels of income (for an overview see Furnham and Argyle 1998).

Much attention has been paid to the significance of money in family formation and family life (see White and Rogers 2000). Economic assets play a considerable role in marriage decisions, not only among women, who have traditionally been assumed to consider their partner's bread-winning potential, but also among men. Men's earning and employment have consistently been found to increase the likelihood of marriage, and even women's increasing participation in the labor force does not seem to render male income less important. Furthermore, the income of both men and women, particularly the income differential between husbands and wives, affects the division of household labor between marital partners beyond the time restrictions due to their employment. There is more sharing of household tasks between spouses if wives contribute more to family income (Coltrane 2000). Economic resources also affect family relations. Conflict over financial affairs seems to be among the most important sources of discord in partnerships and family violence has often been linked to the lack of financial resources. As to divorce, findings demonstrate a positive correlation between men's earnings and marital stability (e.g., Hoffman and Duncan 1995). Benefits from women's higher earnings are less clear, because the stabilizing effect may be counteracted by the higher economic independence of the woman which contributes to greater dangers of divorce (the ‘independence effect’). Furthermore, the causal link between women's income and marital quality/stability may be bi-directional: Marital discord was found not only to be affected by women's earnings, but also to instigate women's higher labor force participation, thus leading to higher earnings (see White and Rogers 2000).

Physical Disease and Drug Use

With his biosocial perspective, Eysenck took seriously the folk wisdom linking temperament with physical health—now a more mainstream idea within medical epidemiology and immunology. An early collaboration with oncologist David Kissen suggested an association between cancer and personality. Eysenck attracted more attention by claiming that the causal role of cigarettes in cancer had not (yet) been convincingly proven and that personality was probably a mediating variable in this equation. He argued that certain types of people smoked, some of who were also susceptible to cancer. Although opponents later acknowledged some of his methodological criticisms of epidemiological research, Eysenck took a welter of criticism from public health advocates as the anti-smoking message became more visible and forceful.

Eysenck published very little in this area again until 1980, when he revisited the issue and presented new genetic evidence linking personality, smoking, and disease. He then took up with a little-known Yugoslav researcher with longitudinal data on personality and disease. In a series of papers in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Eysenck and Ronald Grossarth-Maticek reported a variety of results demonstrating a strong association between particular personality types and cancer, coronary heart disease, and other ailments. Although these were mostly write-ups of studies set in train more than a decade earlier, Eysenck's input helped fine-tune the presentation, theoretical explanations, and analyses. A number of intervention studies were also carried out, with Eysenck more actively involved in the design and analysis of some of these. They suggested that particular forms of psychotherapy that targeted cancer sufferers or those with unhealthy personal styles could have remarkable therapeutic or prophylactic effects. Though the scope and ambition of these studies were applauded, critics complained of lack of detail in the descriptions of the methods used and a lack of controls ensuring the integrity of the data sets. Some even suggested that the results were “too good to be true.” Health psychologists and medical epidemiologists appeared to suspend judgment on the value of these studies until replications appear.

1 Pessimism, Hopelessness, and Disengagement

The concepts of optimism and pessimism are rooted in centuries of folk wisdom about the consequences of people's expectations for the future. Contemporary research on optimism and pessimism also has its roots in people's expectations for the future. In adopting that starting point, this research connects to more than a century of psychological theory (Carver and Scheier 1998, 1999). That is, the expectancy construct links this research to a collection of theories of motivation and action that are called expectancy-value theories. This link, in turn, provides a rationale for examining the way in which the traits of optimism and pessimism are expressed in motivation, behavior, and feelings. These expressions of optimism and pessimism represent a set of potential pathways by which this personality disposition may relate to health.

Expectancy-value models begin with the idea that behavior is aimed at attaining desired goals (values). Without a valued goal, there is no reason to act. The other element is expectancy: confidence or doubt about being able to attain the goal. If a person lacks confidence, again there will be no action. Only with sufficient confidence do people exert efforts and remain engaged in those efforts. These principles pertain to specific values and focused confidence, and they also apply to the more general traits of optimism and pessimism. In optimism and pessimism the ‘confidence’ involved is simply broader in scope.

These principles provide the basis for many predictions about optimists and pessimists: when confronting a challenge, optimists should take a posture of confidence and persistence, even if progress is difficult or slow. Pessimists should be more doubtful and hesitant. This divergence should be amplified under conditions of adversity. Optimists are likely to believe the adversity can be handled successfully, pessimists are likely to anticipate disaster. These differences in orientation can lead to differences in persistence, differences in active efforts to take precautions, differences in many decisions and actions that pertain to health risks.

People's behavioral responses to adversity are important, but overt behavior is not the only response that occurs when people confront adversity. People also experience emotions in such situations. Difficulties elicit a mixture of feelings, and variables such as optimism influence the balance among the feelings. Again, predictions are easily derived from theory. Optimists expect to have good outcomes, even when things are difficult. This confidence should yield a more positive mix of feelings. Pessimists expect bad outcomes. This should be related to more intense negative feelings—anxiety, sadness, or despair. Though these emotional responses are not the focus of this article, a good deal of research has found evidence of such emotional differences between optimists and pessimists (Carver and Scheier 1999).

The experiences of intense distress, hopelessness, and disengagement from effort have physical concomitants; so do positive emotions and engagement in positive efforts. A number of psychologists believe that these physiological responses can play a role in health outcomes. Such processes may influence a person's probability of getting a disease in the first place, they may influence the progression of diseases, they may even influence mortality. There is a good deal of evidence that personality differences in optimism–pessimism relate to differences in health-related outcomes. Research on the precise pathways of influence is at an early stage, but enough evidence has emerged to suggest that the questions are worth examining further.

Researchers have studied the effects of pessimism and hopelessness in two ways. In some studies the variables are measured as generalized personality dispositions. In other studies they are measured as attitudes toward particular contexts or particular health outcomes. Studies that examine both sorts of pessimism typically find a moderate correlation between the two, but sometimes the relation is much weaker (raising interesting questions about the organization of personality that go beyond the scope of this article). Whether deriving from a generalized or a context-specific approach, however, evidence suggests that pessimism and hopelessness have adverse implications for health.

In the review that follows, some studies used generalized measures, others used more focused measures. A few of the studies did not measure pessimism or hopelessness directly, but rather the psychological responses they are believed to induce, such as disengagement vs. active effort.

Relationship Health

Here, too, when relationship health is the outcome, again the evidence indicates that multiple roles—and, in particular, employment for women and family involvement for men—are beneficial. Whereas functionalist theories (and past folk wisdom) predicted that women's educational attainment and employment would threaten marital stability as well as a woman's chances of being married, the reverse now seems to be true. According to Oppenheimer (1997), women who complete higher levels of education have a greater likelihood of marriage than those who do not. As noted earlier, in spite of some support for the functionalist position, historical evidence indicates that income equality within couples is not synonymous with complications for marriage and, in fact, may be associated with benefits (Oppenheimer). In one study of couples’ relative earnings, to be discussed in greater detail below, Ono (1998) found that marital dissolution was highest in couples in which the wife had no earnings. This analysis controlled for husband's race and income, each partner's age, age of the husband at marriage, education, length of marriage, home ownership, presence of children, age of the youngest child, percentage of weeks worked in the previous year, and husband's and wife's percentage of years worked since school completion.

Men, too, benefit from multiple roles. Data on fathers support the view that men's family roles are central to their mental and physical well-being and, in fact, may be more critical to their psychological state than are their employee roles (Pleck, 1985). Wilkie, Ferree and Ratcliff (1998), for example, found that more equitable sharing of breadwinning offered benefits to marital satisfaction for both husbands and wives; the benefits were somewhat greater for husbands. In practice, most research relating multiple roles to health outcomes is tantamount to the study of nontraditional roles and their health effects. For women, the research focus is on the influence of the paid-employee role among married women with children; for men, the focus is on the roles of partner and parent among employed men. (See Daly, Ashbourne & Hawkins in this volume for a review of the literature on fathers and work-life balance.)

Symbolism

Symbolism, of all the Freudian theories, is perhaps the most widely recognized by the general public but unfortunately the hardest to nail down as to what was actually said or meant. It did not feature in his early work in the Studies on Hysteria but began to be articulated in the context of the interpretation of dreams. Dreams were viewed by Freud as a means of unlocking the closed world of the unconscious and in that context symbols were seen as a means of decoding the content of the dreams. As Freud developed his ideas over the course of his career, he became more interested in the use of symbols as a form of phylogentic inheritance, a universal language shared by all humans, as evidenced by a universal understanding and similarity of art and folk wisdom.

Whilst there is little doubt that there is a shared semiotic that is transcultural, it is difficult to know whether at the phantasy level Freud's ideas of a universal symbolism are true – does fear of beheading really represent fear of castration or is having one's head cut off scary in its own right? Part of the problem is that Freud's ideas are now so universal that the semiotic of a cigar as a phallus is generally held: but was it always thus?

With regard to hysteric symptoms, Freud's use of hysteria from a state of a conversion disorder as we would currently understand the condition to a more generalized neurotic state without the need for a physical symptom makes it hard to know exactly where symbolism fitted into his views on the formation of what we would now call a functional neurologic symptom. His immediate followers, most infamously Ferenczi, would relate it to a mix of sexual phantasies and fantasies; thus the woman with globus had a secret fear of fellatio – an idea widely and justly ridiculed. In the modern era therapists will often enthusiastically quote symbolism in a fairly direct way as involving a symbolic representation of the underlying psychologic fear in the display of the physical symptom as part of an illness “narrative.” Thus the abused woman harboring repressed fantasies of stabbing her husband may develop a paralysis of her dominant arm. There is no scientific support for these notions but they are largely untestable owing to the very nature of symbolism as a symbol.

Imitation in Married Couples

With the capacity for imitation present at birth, it is perhaps not surprising that imitation persists through the lifespan. A study by Zajonc, Adelman, Murphy, and Niedenthal (1987) suggests that life-long imitation may affect what faces look like. The impetus for this study was the folk wisdom that the longer couples are married, the more they look alike. Zajonc et al. tested this belief by showing subjects photographs of men and women, side by side. Unknown to the subjects, all the couples were married, and had been married for at least 25 years. The subjects' task was to rate the physical similarity of the two people shown in each stimulus display and guess whether they were married to each other. Only faces were shown in the photographs; the models’ bodies were not revealed. Half the photographs came from the couples’ first wedding anniversaries; the other half came from the couples' 25th wedding anniversary. The result was that the ratings of the physical similarity of the two members of each couple, and the ratings of the likelihood that the couple was married, were higher for the pictures taken after 25 years of marriage than for the pictures taken after 1 year of marriage.

Why did couples look more similar if they were married longer? Was it perhaps due to common eating habits over 25 years of living together? This seems unlikely, for when the photographed men and women were rank-ordered from heaviest to lightest, the correlation between men and women was higher for pictures taken from the 1-year photographs than for pictures taken from the 25-year photographs. Thus, perceived weight for husbands and wives was more similar when the husbands and wives had been married for a brief time than for a long time. The tendency to see greater physical similarity between older couples was also not due to the couple’s experiencing the same climate or living conditions, for all the couples had similar geographic and demographic backgrounds.

The key to understanding the effect was the degree of happiness the couples reported. Zajonc et al. (1987) asked the couples depicted in the photographs to answer questions about their marriages. When Zajonc et al. compared the marital happiness data with the physical similarity data, they found that the higher the couple’s reported happiness, the greater the perceived similarity of their faces. In addition, the more similar their attitudes, and the more often they shared worries and concerns, the more similar they appeared. Apparently, couples who are predisposed to share each others' joys and sorrows for long periods of time may tend to imitate each others' facial expressions, promoting empathy and, incidentally, facial similarity.

Policy and Practice Implications

As noted in the preceding section, many of the negative developmental outcomes observed during adolescence have been associated with various features of cognitive and neurocognitive immaturity. The principal reason for this research focus has been the health and developmental risks that arise from this pattern, including behavioral misadventure that inflates the rates morbidity and mortality in this otherwise healthy developmental period, and the increase in delinquent behavior that yields an age-crime curve that follows almost exactly the general age curves of sensation seeking and risk taking.

This focus has sometimes been misinterpreted to characterizes adolescent development as a contest between a “bad” aspect of brain and cognitive development that drives sensation seeking and risk taking, and a “good” aspect that emphasizes sound judgment, impulse control, and appropriate behavior. As Pfeifer and Allen (2012), among others, have noted, this represents a central misconception. These negative consequences represent one pathway of adolescent developmental health, but the same underlying mechanisms are crucial for many positive and essential features as well. The exploratory behaviors that are promoted by this pattern of cognitive, neural, and neurocognitive development are essential for the development of autonomy and identity, and for engaging more actively in the world beyond one's family.

This misconception leads to unfortunate inferences, with implications for public understanding and public policy. First, it reinforces the “folk wisdom” that the period of adolescent development is primarily about troubles to be avoided, and these troubles arise inevitably from the nature of adolescence. This easily becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy for parents, teachers, and the public, whereby any instances, even minor ones, of adolescent behavior that lead to problems are encoded as manifestations of underlying mechanisms that need to be suppressed (for example, as in ineffective Just Say No campaigns against substance use, or the promotion of abstinence-only sex education). Often overlooked are manifestations of positive adolescent development, such as volunteerism or political and civic involvement in the issues of the day, because they do not fit the cognitive bias of adolescence as a trouble-prone developmental phase.

The second and equally problematic consequence is that the real challenges to adolescent developmental health noted above are often viewed as the consequence of deficient maturity as opposed to manifestations of normal development. This misunderstanding undermines our ability to view adolescent development in context, seeing it instead as underlying problems within individual adolescents. This constraints our ability to develop effective intervention, prevention, and policy efforts that are based on a clearer understanding of adolescent development, and to address the more consequential social contexts that present real risks to adolescent developmental health at a population level (Keating et al., 2013).

Successful initiatives do exist. Adolescent driving fatalities have declined dramatically with the introduction of Graduated Driver Licensing programs that scaffold the acquisition of expertise and remove distractions such as peer passengers that have a disproportionate negative impact on adolescent drivers (Shults and Williams, 2017). A deeper understanding of adolescent cognitive and neural development set the stage in the US for more appropriate and proportionate approaches to juvenile justice, recognizing features that mitigate culpability and acknowledge the deep developmental changes yet to occur (Steinberg, 2013). The promotion of comprehensive sex education that promote individual responsibility and the expertise to exercise it, versus abstinence only approaches, have been clearly associated with lower rates of sexually transmitted diseases and infections, as well as reductions in unplanned teen pregnancies (Santelli et al., 2017). In a global context, adolescents have the same rights as children to appropriate nurturance during their development (Ruck et al., 2016), although the form of that support does change across development. Understanding these “evolving capacities” is essential to the design of effective approaches (Keating, 2017). Characterizing the nature of adolescent development, including cognitive, neurocognitive, and neural aspects, as fundamentally negative or positive is not accurate. The patterns of development are normative and essential for developmental health. Designing approaches to better support adolescent developmental health at the population level depends on a clear understanding of both the underlying mechanisms and the social contexts that impact those mechanisms (Keating et al., 2013).