Development and Manifestation of Wisdom in Individual Lives

Wisdom is a topic of growing interest in current psychology, probably due to an increasing interest in positive aspects of aging in the face of current demographic developments. To date, psychological work on wisdom has focused on (a) studying laypeople`s conceptions of wisdom and (b) developing standardized wisdom measures. Few studies have investigated wisdom in the context of individual lives: How does wisdom develop - which predispositions, experiences, and ways of reflecting about experiences are conducive to becoming wise? And how does wisdom actually manifest in real-life situations - how do wise people deal with difficult life problems such as traumatic events or interpersonal conflicts? Studying these questions may yield important insights both about wisdom as a construct and ways to foster wisdom, and may offer new paths to measuring wisdom in a more ecologically valid way. In this project, we propose four interrelated resources that are crucial both to the development and the manifestation of wisdom in individual lives: openness to experience, emotion regulation, a sense of mastery, and a reflective attitude. We want to test this model and evaluate a new measurement approach by studying individuals who are wise according to judgments by others and current standards of wisdom measurement. These wise persons, as well as one age-matched and one young control group, will be interviewed about their life story and about a difficult conflict in their life. The life-story part of the project focuses on fundamental life changes, (i.e., events that had major impact on participants` life situation and life priorities. We do not necessarily expect wise participants to report more such events than control individuals. However, we expect them to report different ways of dealing with those events and different ways of later integrating them into their life stories. Specifically, we expect wise individuals to show more openness to life changes, more successful emotion regulation, a higher sense of mastery in dealing with life changes, and more reflection during and after the event than control participants. We also expect them to show more indications of learning and growth through difficult life events. The conflict-narrative part of the project is aimed both at studying how wise people deal with interpersonal conflicts and at evaluating conflict narratives as a possible new way to measuring wisdom. Current measurement approaches are either based on self-report, which is subject to a number of biases, or on performance with fictitious life problems, which do not involve participants emotionally. Thus, non-cognitive aspects of wisdom, such as emotion regulation, are not well-covered by these measures. Narratives of actual conflicts from participants` lives centrally include emotional and interpersonal components of wisdom and can be coded both with respect to wisdom criteria derived from existing wisdom models and with respect to our four wisdom resources. We expect wisdom scores obtained through conflict narratives to be in better accordance with predictions about wisdom suggested by implicit theory studies, e.g., old age as a typical characteristic of wise individuals, than scores based on existing wisdom models.

The two main goals of the project were, first, to test the predictions of a new developmental theory of wisdom, and second, to investigate a new approach for measuring wisdom. A total of 47 wisdom nominees and 123 control participants participated in a comprehensive interview study, in which they were asked to talk about a highly difficult experience and a serious conflict from their life. Interview questions concerned how participants had experienced and dealt with the situation when it occurred and how they saw it now. In addition, they were presented with several other scales and tasks assessing wisdom and related variables. As predicted in our developmental theory, wisdom nominees showed higher levels of four wisdom-relevant resources in their interviews than age- and gender-parallel control participants: Mastery (the capacity to take action where it is required, but also to accept what cannot be changed), openness (interest in and tolerance of new ideas and perspectives), reflectivity (the willingness and ability to look at complex things from different perspectives, including a critical perspective on ones own feelings, thoughts, and behavior), and emotion regulation (the ability to perceive and regulate ones own feelings) with empathy (awareness of and caring concern for the feelings of others). An interesting methodological finding was that the four wisdom scales and tasks used in the project showed rather low agreements the outcomes of assessments of wisdom seem to be highly dependent on which measure is used. In the project, a new brief general wisdom scale was developed. Additional analyses showed that wisdom nominees reported gratitude for particular experiences much more often than control participants did. They also reported qualitatively different sources of gratitude and lessons learned from life, suggesting increased reflection and integration of life experiences. An ethnographic subproject showed that in their everyday lives, wise individuals have a particularly mindful way of dealing with other people, nature, literature, arts, and the media. In sum, the results of the project show that it is important to consider individual life contexts and life stories in order to understand the development of wisdom. Wisdom is fostered to a large extent by the reflection and integration of life-changing experiences. Some of the individual resources that are important for the development of wisdom can probably be fostered by interventions.