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What do psychology researchers have to say about wisdom as a psychological construct? A lot, it seems. People have been interested in wisdom and how to attain it since time immemorial. From the Upanishads to the Bible, Confucius, Socrates, and Aristotle, religious sages and philosophers have studied wisdom for millennia. As evidenced by the interest it has generated over the centuries, wisdom is an important quality.
But what about psychology researchers? Wisdom is, after all, a cognitive and psychological trait or state. Although its history in psychological research is much shorter (obviously!), researchers have been studying wisdom as a psychological construct for a few decades now.
They don’t agree on a unified theory of wisdom. The academic literature contains more than twenty different models and theories of wisdom. Below, we will look at some of them and then at what they share in common.
In today’s VUCA world, we need wisdom more than ever. We need wise leaders and wise people who make the right decisions that will affect not only their self-interest but also help us all advance and live better lives. For that, we need to study wisdom and understand it better, philosophically and spiritually, but especially as a psychological construct.
That is what researchers have been trying to do since the 1980s…
Wisdom is often associated with religion or spirituality, but it is also studied scientifically as a psychological construct / Photo by Frank Holleman on Unsplash The Berlin Wisdom Paradigm The first comprehensive research program on wisdom as a psychological construct was conducted by Baltes and colleagues on the so-called Berlin Wisdom Paradigm in the 1980s (Baltes and Smith, 1990) .
They defined wisdom “as expertise in the conduct and meaning of life” (Baltes and Staudigner, 2000 ). For the Berlin school proponents, wisdom is expertise in “the pragmatics of life.” By this, they mean knowledge and good judgement about planning, managing, and understanding a good life. Thus, this school of thought considers wisdom a system of expertise and knowledge.
They identified five criteria impacting an individual’s level of wisdom: factual knowledge about the pragmatics of life, procedural knowledge about the same, lifespan contextualism (i.e., understanding the different stages of development in life and the different contexts in which people find themselves), relativism of values and life priorities, and recognition and management of uncertainties. The first two are basic criteria shared by all expertise domains—all experts in a field have them. The other three are specific to wisdom.
Proponents of the Berlin Wisdom Paradigm conducted a comprehensive program of empirical studies to test their theoretical assumptions (Baltes and Smith, 2008 ). However, their theory has also faced criticism for focusing almost exclusively on the cognitive aspects of wisdom. As we will explore below, other schools of thought adopted a broader view that also included moral, emotional, or developmental aspects.
The Balance Theory of Wisdom Robert Sternberg is one of the most prolific writers of wisdom. In his Balance Theory of Wisdom, he defines wisdom as “practical knowledge used in particular to achieve a balance of intrapersonal, interpersonal, and extrapersonal interests ” (Sternberg, 2019 , p. 166, emphasis in the original). For him, wisdom is the ability we possess to manage interests at those three levels: our own, those of the people immediately around us, and those of society at large (or the community or the eco-system).
This focus on the extrapersonal, on the wider community, makes Sternberg the first author to emphasise the prosocial and altruistic dimensions of wisdom. Under this reading, one cannot be wise and selfish, wise people look at the bigger picture and seek the greater good.
Like the Berlin group’s, Sternberg’s was a primarily cognitive conceptualisation of wisdom. Unlike other theories of wisdom, Sternberg did not conceptualise a way to measure wisdom aligned with the balance theory, and consequently, it has not been tested empirically as widely as the Berlin Paradigm or other models.
The Wise-Reasoning Paradigm Grossmann and colleagues’ Wise-Reasoning Paradigm (Grossmann et al., 2010; Grossmann, 2017), similar to the previous two, concentrated on the cognitive aspects of wisdom. They argued that wisdom is a state that fluctuates across situations: the same individual can be wise in one scenario and foolish in another, in what is called Solomon’s Paradox . King Solomon, of biblical fame, was notoriously wise when making decisions about others but not so much when dealing with his own personal issues.
That is why this group of researchers speaks more of wise reasoning than wisdom as a permanent personal trait.
They identified dimensions such as intellectual humility, the ability to see others’ perspectives, the integration of differing viewpoints, and the recognition of uncertainty and change. All these are applied to solve problems wisely.
They measured these dimensions in research participants by interviewing them on how they reacted to complex hypothetical situations, generally about interpersonal conflicts, and how they thought they would develop.
The Three-Dimensional Wisdom Model There is a debate among wisdom researchers about whether wisdom is a state or a more permanent trait. As we have seen, the Wise-Reasoning school conceives wisdom as a state. Representing the other camp, Ardelt (2003 ) sees wisdom as a trait.
Ardelt thought cognitive models of wisdom like those mentioned above lacked an affective and compassionate aspect. Thus, she proposed the Three-Dimensional Wisdom Model (3D-WM), the first theory model conceptualising wisdom as a set of personality traits around cognitive, reflective, and affective dimensions. She also devised a questionnaire of 39 questions to measure wisdom according to these three dimensions.
Wise people have some cognitive qualities, but they also reflect on their experiences and are emotionally competent. For Ardelt, emotional competence meant that wise people have positive emotions toward others (e.g., compassion) and no negative emotions.
Personally, I do not believe anybody can entirely suppress negative emotions. Also, can they be called negative? All emotions are part of life and serve their purpose . Rather than eliminating them entirely, wise people channel all their emotions, pleasant and unpleasant, “positive” or “negative,” productively. They listen to their emotions and use them effectively. They put their emotions at the service of their goals.
Still, Ardelt’s inclusion of emotions and reflection in her model of wisdom was a positive step forward. Both seem to be essential parts of what it means to be wise, which cannot be a purely intellectual or cognitive enterprise.
The MORE Life Experience Model of Wisdom GlĂĽck and colleagues (GlĂĽck and Bluck, 2013; GlĂĽck, Bluck and Weststrate, 2019) proposed the MORE Life Experience Model of wisdom, which focuses on the resources people need to develop wisdom as they face life challenges.
Those resources are Managing uncertainty, Openness to new perspectives and experiences, Reflectivity and Emotional sensitivity and emotion regulation (hence the MORE acronym). They do not see wisdom as a personality trait or a situational state but as a set of psychological resources individuals develop as they face challenges in life and reflect on them.
The reflection part, also included in Ardelt’s model, is essential. Wisdom and age have often been linked together. When we are asked to think about someone wise, we usually think about an elderly person. However, it is not ageing which produces wisdom on its own. There are plenty of wise young people and foolish old ones. What we need to develop wisdom is experiences and then the right mental framework to reflect on those experiences, learn from them, and develop and grow.
And many more! Many other models and theories of wisdom exist, far too many to do justice to all of them in this blog post. Judith GlĂĽck (2018 ) quipped that there are nearly as many definitions of wisdom as there are wisdom researchers.
Bangen, Meeks and Jeste (2013 ) reviewed 24 theories of wisdom and identified five subcomponents included in more than half of them: social decision-making and pragmatic knowledge of life, prosocial attitudes and behaviours, reflection and self-understanding, coping effectively with uncertainty and emotional homeostasis. Other frequently included dimensions were value relativism, openness to new experiences, spirituality and humour.
These nine dimensions seem to be the most repeated in the different wisdom theories and models.
Integrating all the theories of wisdom Some authors have likened the state of research on wisdom to the story of the blind men and the elephant , where each man conceived a different idea of what the elephant was because they touched different parts of it. One blind man thought he was touching a snake because he was touching the trunk; another one was touching a leg, so he thought he was touching a tree trunk, and so on.
Gluck and Weststrate (2022 ) argue that different theories of wisdom exist because wisdom is a multidimensional and multifaceted construct. Different researchers, like the blind men, focus on different aspects of wisdom. Some focus on the cognitive aspects, some on the moral, some on the emotional, some on the developmental, and so forth.
They propose an Integrative Wisdom Model, with both cognitive and non-cognitive aspects mediating wisdom. The noncognitive components are:
– Exploratory orientation: this includes the motivation to understand life and learn from experiences and having an open mind.
– Concern for others: empathy and an orientation toward the greater good.
– Emotion regulation: identifying and managing emotions in oneself and others.
Whereas the cognitive dimensions are:
– Life and self-knowledge: broad and deep knowledge of oneself and life in general.
– Self-reflection: Reflecting on one’s emotions, thoughts, and behaviours to overcome blind spots and biases and gain self-knowledge.
– Meta-cognitive capacities: awareness of uncertainty, what is uncontrollable, and of divergent perspectives from others.
The noncognitive components put an individual in a wisdom-fostering emotional and motivational state that enables them to use the cognitive components.
Both noncognitive and cognitive components are necessary, but not sufficient, for wise reasoning and wise behaviour. If someone has the noncognitive aspects but lacks the cognitive ones, they will not have the cognitive abilities to make wise decisions, and if they have the cognitive capacity but do not have the right motivation, open-mindedness, or altruism, or their judgement is clouded by high-intensity emotion, their reasoning and behaviours will not merit being called wise. Sadly, everybody knows of extremely intelligent people who cannot be called wise because they lack the right moral standards or emotional intelligence.
There are many theories of wisdom, so what? The Cambridge Handbook of Wisdom includes more wisdom theories than chapters, and it has 34 of them!
Wisdom research is in its infancy, so it is not surprising that researchers have not yet reached a consensus on what it is and what dimensions form it. Will they ever get there?
It’s difficult to tell. Wisdom has been talked about for millennia in all different cultures, so it means different things to different people. Often the translation of the word wisdom has different nuances in different languages.
Still, psychology researchers are studying it as an evidence-based psychological construct, and eventually, they will reach some kind of consensus on what it means to be wise, at least from a psychological point of view.
Aristotle thought wisdom was a meta-virtue that sat above all other virtues, controlling and shaping them. You could be courageous or magnanimous, but if you did not have the wisdom to know when to utilise that courage or magnanimity, they weren’t of much use.
In today’s chaotic, complex, fast-moving, uncertain world, we need wisdom more than ever. We definitely need wise leaders leading our institutions and organisations. The more we know about wisdom, how to measure it, and how to develop it, the better.
Thus, even though the variety and inconsistency in the body of psychological research on wisdom may seem confusing at the moment, researchers are doing valuable work. Unlike philosophy or religion, psychological research allows for the evaluation of wisdom through empirical research and the operationalisation of wisdom, its dimensions, and the different methods for developing and cultivating it. The more research conducted on wisdom, the better.
Everything we can do to better understand wisdom and foster it among our population, especially our leaders, is welcome. Wisdom has been studied and sought after for millennia for a reason. In these unwise, even foolish times, a bit more wisdom among our leaders and the population at large would help us build a better world.
And that’s something we all want, isn’t it?
