Throughout recorded history, wisdom has been viewed as the ideal endpoint of human development. Of course, the psychological study of wisdom is still rather young compared to its philosophical treatment, for the very definition of philosophy is ??love or pursuit of wisdom.?? Historically, wisdom has been conceptualized in terms of a state of idealized being, as a process of perfect knowing and jud…
Among one the major reasons for the emergence of the psychological study of wisdom in the late 1970s and early 1980s was the search for positive aspects of aging. An early approach to defining wisdom from a psychological perspective can be seen in its treatment in dictionaries. The Oxford English Dictionary defines wisdom as, ??Good judgment and advice in difficult and uncertain matters of life.??…
Most empirical research on wisdom in the field of psychology has focused on further elaboration of the definition of wisdom. Moving beyond the dictionary definitions, research explored the nature of everyday beliefs, folk conceptions, or implicit (subjective) theories of wisdom (see Sternberg, 1990). These studies, in principle, build on research initiated by Vivian Clayton in 1976. Clayton found …
Another recent line of empirical psychological inquiry on wisdom addresses the question of how to measure behavioral expressions of wisdom. Within this tradition, three lines of work can be identified: (1) assessment of wisdom as a personality characteristic, (2) assessment of wisdom in the Neopiagetian tradition of adult thought, and (3) assessment of wisdom as an expertise with regard to difficu…
Given the fact that wisdom-related performance had been successfully operationalized, a question has arisen as to whether it is possible to increase wisdom-related knowledge and judgment. At least three studies have been conducted to test this idea (see Baltes and Staudinger, 2000). In a 1993 study conducted within the Neopiagetian tradition, Kitchener and colleagues demonstrated that the level of…
Please include a link to this page if you have found this material useful for research or writing a related article. Content on this website is from high-quality, licensed material originally published in print form. You can always be sure you're reading unbiased, factual, and accurate information.
Highlight the text below, right-click, and select “copy”. Paste the link into your website, email, or any other HTML document.
User Comments
The following comments are not guaranteed to be that of a trained medical professional. Please consult your physician for advice.