Abstract
Climate change, proliferation of ultranationalist movements in various parts of the globe, tribalism, and denial of science—in times like these social critiques and philosophers often call for greater wisdom. What is wisdom and how does it develop? Philosophers argue that knowledge is insufficient for wisdom. Instead, they have argued that wisdom requires certain aspects of meta-cognition to flexibly navigate complex environments: epistemic humility, consideration of multiple perspectives and ways a situation may unfold, and integration of different perspectives. Empirical scientists recently started to explore these concepts. Our chapter highlights some of the evidence-based advances in the study of wisdom made in the last decade and their utility for tackling some of the problems the world is facing today.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Amnesty International. (2016). “This is what we die for”: Human rights abuses in the Democratic Republic of the Congo power the global trade in cobalt. London, UK. Retrieved from https://www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/AFR6231832016ENGLISH.PDF.
Ardelt, M. (2004). Where can wisdom be found? Human Development, 47(5), 304–307. https://doi.org/10.1159/000079158.
Aristotle. (1953). Ethics: the Nicomachean ethics. London: Allen & Unwin.
Bakshy, E., Messing, S., & Adamic, L. A. (2015). Exposure to ideologically diverse news and opinion on Facebook. Science, 348(6239), 1130–1132. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aaa1160.
Baltes, P. B., & Kunzmann, U. (2003). Wisdom. The Psychologist, 16(3), 131–133.
Baltes, P. B., & Kunzmann, U. (2004). The two faces of wisdom: Wisdom as a general theory of knowledge and judgment about excellence in mind and virtue vs. wisdom as everyday realization in people and products. Human Development, 47, 290–299. https://doi.org/10.1159/000079156.
Baltes, P. B., & Smith, J. (2008). The fascination of wisdom: Its nature, ontogeny, and function. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 3(1), 56–64. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-6916.2008.00062.x.
Bangen, K. J., Meeks, T. W., & Jeste, D. V. (2013). Defining and assessing wisdom: A review of the literature. The American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, 21(12), 1254–1266.
Bates, W. (2009). Gross national happiness. Asian‐Pacific Economic Literature, 23(2), 1–16.
Bessi, A., & Ferrara, E. (2016). Social bots distort the 2016 U.S. presidential election online discussion. First Monday, 21(11). https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v21i11.7090.
Brady, W. J., Wills, J. A., Jost, J. T., Tucker, J. A., & Van Bavel, J. J. (2017). Emotion shapes the diffusion of moralized content in social networks. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114(28), 7313–7318. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1618923114.
Brewer, M. B. (1999). The psychology of prejudice: Ingroup love and outgroup hate? Journal of Social Issues, 55(3), 429–444. https://doi.org/10.1111/0022-4537.00126.
Brienza, J. P., & Grossmann, I. (2017). Social class and wise reasoning about interpersonal conflicts across regions, persons and situations. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 284(1869). https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2017.1870.
Brienza, J. P., Kung, F. Y. H., & Chao, M. M. (2018). Wise reasoning reduces intergroup bias. Waterloo, ON.
Brienza, J. P., Kung, F. Y. H., Santos, H. C., Bobocel, D. R. R., & Grossmann, I. (2017). Wisdom, bias, and balance: Toward a process-sensitive measurement of wisdom-related cognition. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000171.
Cacioppo, J. T., & Cacioppo, S. (2018). The growing problem of loneliness. The Lancet, 391(10119), 426. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(18)30142-9.
Canada Newswire. (2007). Xerox marks human rights and environmental progress in annual citizenship report [Press release]. Retrieved from https://en-news.xerox.ca/news/CAN_News_11_12_2007.
Colvin, G. (2017). Worlds greatest leaders. Retrieved February 4, 2018, from http://fortune.com/worlds-greatest-leaders/.
Cornwell, E. Y., & Waite, L. J. (2009). Social disconnectedness, perceived isolation, and health among older adults. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 50(1), 31–48. https://doi.org/10.1177/002214650905000103.
Dawes, R. M., & Messick, D. M. (2000). Social dilemmas. International Journal of Psychology, 35(2), 111–116. https://doi.org/10.1080/002075900399402.
De Freitas, J., Cikara, M., Grossmann, I., & Schlegel, R. (2017). Origins of the belief in good true selves. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 21(9), 634–636. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2017.05.009.
De Freitas, J., Sarkissian, H., Newman, G. E., Grossmann, I., De Brigard, F., Luco, A., & Knobe, J. (2017). Consistent belief in a good true self in misanthropes and three interdependent cultures. Cognitive Science. https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.12505.
Diener, E. (1984). Subjective well-being. Psychological Bulletin, 95(3), 542–575. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.95.3.542.
Enli, G. (2017). Twitter as arena for the authentic outsider: Exploring the social media campaigns of Trump and Clinton in the 2016 US presidential election. European Journal of Communication, 32(1), 50–61. https://doi.org/10.1177/0267323116682802.
Fernbach, P. M., Rogers, T., Fox, C. R., & Sloman, S. A. (2013). Political extremism is supported by an illusion of understanding. Psychological Science, 24(6), 939–946. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797612464058.
Fleeson, W., Furr, R. M., Jayawickreme, E., Meindl, P., & Helzer, E. G. (2014). Character: The prospects for a personality-based perspective on morality. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 8(4), 178–191. https://doi.org/10.1111/spc3.12094.
Gibson, R. (2005). Sustainability assessment: Criteria and process. New York, NY: Routledge.
Glück, J. (2017). Measuring wisdom: Existing approaches, continuing challenges, and new developments. The Journals of Gerontology: Series B. https://doi.org/10.1093/geronb/gbx140.
Greenfield, P. M. (2009). Linking social change and developmental change: shifting pathways of human development. Developmental Psychology, 45(2), 401–418. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0014726.
Grossmann, I. (2017a). Wisdom and how to cultivate it. European Psychologist, 22(4), 233–246. https://doi.org/10.1027/1016-9040/a000302.
Grossmann, I. (2017b). Wisdom in context. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 12(2), 233–257. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691616672066.
Grossmann, I., & Brienza, J. (2018). The strengths of wisdom provide unique contributions to improved leadership, sustainability, inequality, gross national happiness, and civic discourse in the face of contemporary world problems. Journal of Intelligence, 6(2), 22. https://doi.org/10.3390/jintelligence6020022.
Grossmann, I., Brienza, J. P., & Bobocel, D. R. (2017). Wise deliberation sustains cooperation. Nature Human Behaviour, 1(0061). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-017-0061.
Grossmann, I., Eibach, R., Koyama, J., & Sahi, Q. B. (2019). A dual standard framework for sound judgment. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/pr8pn.
Grossmann, I., Gerlach, T. M., & Denissen, J. J. A. (2016). Wise reasoning in the face of everyday life challenges. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 7(7), 611–622. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550616652206.
Grossmann, I., Karasawa, M., Izumi, S., Na, J., Varnum, M. E. W., Kitayama, S., & Nisbett, R. E. (2012). Aging and wisdom: Culture matters. Psychological Science, 23(10), 1059–1066. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797612446025.
Grossmann, I., & Kross, E. (2010). The impact of culture on adaptive versus maladaptive self-reflection. Psychological Science, 21(8), 1150–1157. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797610376655.
Grossmann, I., & Kross, E. (2014). Exploring “Solomon’s paradox”: Self-distancing eliminates the self-other asymmetry in wise reasoning about close relations in younger and older adults. Psychological Science, 25(8), 1571–1580. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797614535400.
Grossmann, I., & Kung, F. Y. H. (n.d.). Wisdom and culture. In S. Kitayama & D. Cohen (Eds.), Handbook of cultural psychology (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Guilford Press.
Grossmann, I., Na, J., Varnum, M. E. W., Kitayama, S., & Nisbett, R. E. (2013). A route to well-being: Intelligence versus wise reasoning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 142(3), 944–953. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0029560.
Grossmann, I., Oakes, H., & Santos, H. C. (2019). Wise reasoning benefits from emodiversity, irrespective of emotional intensity. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 148(5), 805–823. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0000543.
Grossmann, I., Sahdra, B. K., & Ciarrochi, J. (2016). A heart and a mind: Self-distancing facilitates the association between heart rate variability, and wise reasoning. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 10. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2016.00068.
Grossmann, I., & Varnum, M. E. W. (2015). Social structure, infectious diseases, disasters, secularism, and cultural change in America. Psychological Science, 26(3), 311–324. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797614563765.
Holt-Lunstad, J. (2017). The potential public health relevance of social isolation and loneliness: Prevalence, epidemiology, and risk factors. Public Policy & Aging Report, 27(4), 127–130. https://doi.org/10.1093/ppar/prx030.
Holt-Lunstad, J., Smith, T. B., Baker, M., Harris, T., & Stephenson, D. (2015). Loneliness and social isolation as risk factors for mortality. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 10(2), 227–237. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691614568352.
Hong, S. (2013). Who benefits from Twitter? Social media and political competition in the U.S. House of Representatives. Government Information Quarterly, 30(4), 464–472. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2013.05.009.
Hou, C., Sarigöllü, E., Jo, M.-S., & Liang, D. (2018). Stepping outside the self promotes pro-environmental behaviors. Sustainability, 10(9), 3128. https://doi.org/10.3390/su10093128.
Huynh, A. C., Oakes, H., Shay, G. R., & McGregor, I. (2017). The wisdom in virtue: Pursuit of virtue predicts wise reasoning about personal conflicts. Psychological Science, 28(12), 1848–1856. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797617722621.
Huynh, A. C., Yang, D. Y.-J., & Grossmann, I. (2016). The value of prospective reasoning for close relationships. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 7(8), 893–902. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550616660591.
Jeste, D. V., Ardelt, M., Blazer, D., Kraemer, H. C., Vaillant, G., & Meeks, T. W. (2010). Expert consensus on characteristics of wisdom: A Delphi method study. The Gerontologist, 50(5), 668–680. https://doi.org/10.1093/geront/gnq022.
Jordan, J. J., Hoffman, M., Bloom, P., & Rand, D. G. (2016). Third-party punishment as a costly signal of trustworthiness. Nature, 530(7591), 473–476. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature16981.
Kekes, J. (1983). Wisdom. American Philosophical Quarterly, 20(3), 277–286. https://doi.org/10.2307/20014008.
Kekes, J. (1995). Moral wisdom and good lives. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Kristjánsson, K. (2018). Virtue from the perspective of psychology. In N. Snow (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of virtue (pp. 246–250). New York: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199385195.013.26.
Kross, E., & Ayduk, O. (2011). Making meaning out of negative experiences by self-distancing. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 20(3), 187–191. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721411408883.
Kross, E., & Grossmann, I. (2012). Boosting wisdom: Distance from the self enhances wise reasoning, attitudes, and behavior. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 141(1), 43–48. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0024158.
Kunzmann, U., & Baltes, P. B. (2003). Wisdom-related knowledge: Affective, motivational, and interpersonal correlates. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 29(9), 1104–1119. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167203254506.
Leary, M. R., Diebels, K. J., Davisson, E. K., Jongman-Sereno, K. P., Isherwood, J. C., Raimi, K. T., … Hoyle, R. H. (2017). Cognitive and interpersonal features of intellectual humility. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167217697695.
Metaxas, P. T., & Mustafaraj, E. (2012). Social media and the elections. Science, 338(6106), 472–473. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1230456.
Mudde, C. (2014). Fighting the system? Populist radical right parties and party system change. Party Politics, 20(2), 217–226. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354068813519968.
Oakes, H., Brienza, J. P., Elnakouri, A., & Grossmann, I. (n.d.). Wise reasoning: Converging evidence for the psychology of sound judgment. In R. J. Sternberg & J. Glück (Eds.), Cambridge handbook of wisdom. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Oxenham, S. (2017). The rise of political apathy in two charts. Nature. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature.2017.22106.
Pariser, E. (2011). The filter bubble: What the Internet is hiding from you. New York, NY: Penguin Press.
Pew Research Center. (2017). The partisan divide on political values grows even wider. Sharp shifts among Democrats on aid to needy, race, immigration. Retrieved February 4, 2018, from http://www.people-press.org/2017/10/05/the-partisan-divide-on-political-values-grows-even-wider/.
Ronson, J. (2015, February 12). How one stupid tweet blew up Justine Sacco’s life. New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how-one-stupid-tweet-ruined-justine-saccos-life.html.
Rozin, P., & Royzman, E. B. (2001). Negativity bias, negativity dominance, and contagion. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 5(4), 296–320.
Santos, H. C., & Grossmann, I. (2018). Relationship of wisdom-related attitudes and subjective well-being over twenty years: Application of the train-preregister-test (TPT) cross-validation approach to longitudinal data. Waterloo, ON. https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/F4THJ.
Santos, H. C., Huynh, A. C., & Grossmann, I. (2017). Wisdom in a complex world: A situated account of wise reasoning and its development. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 11(10). https://doi.org/10.1111/spc3.12341.
Santos, H. C., Varnum, M. E. W., & Grossmann, I. (2017). Global increases in individualism. Psychological Science, 28(9), 1228–1239. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797617700622.
Schwartz, B., & Sharpe, K. E. (2006). Practical wisdom: Aristotle meets positive psychology. Journal of Happiness Studies, 7(3), 377–395.
Sigelman, L. (1981). Is ignorance bliss? A reconsideration of the folk wisdom. Human Relations, 34(11), 965–974. https://doi.org/10.1177/001872678103401104.
Silver, N. (2012). The signal and the noise: Why most predictions fail–But some don’t. New York, NY: Penguin Press.
Smyth, R., & Oates, S. (2015). Mind the gaps: Media use and mass action in Russia. Europe-Asia Studies, 67(2), 285–305. https://doi.org/10.1080/09668136.2014.1002682.
Staudinger, U. M., & Glück, J. (2011). Psychological wisdom research: Commonalities and differences in a growing field. Annual Review of Psychology, 62(1), 215–241.
Staudinger, U. M., Lopez, D., & Baltes, P. B. (1997). The psychometric location of wisdom-related performance: Intelligence, personality, and more? Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 23(11), 1200–1214.
Sternberg, R. J. (1998). A balance theory of wisdom. Review of General Psychology, 2(4), 347–365.
Sternberg, R. J. (2004). Why smart people can be so foolish. European Psychologist, 9(3), 145–150. https://doi.org/10.1027/1016-9040.9.3.145.
Sternberg, R. J. (2014). Building wisdom and character. In S. J. Lynn, W. O’Donohue, & S. Lilienfeld (Eds.), Health, happiness, and well-being: Better living through psychological science (pp. 296–316). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Strohminger, N., Knobe, J., & Newman, G. (2017). The true self: A psychological concept distinct from the self. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 12(4), 551–560. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691616689495.
The Core Writing Team. (2015). IPCC, 2014: Climate change 2014. Synthesis report. Summary for policymakers (R. L. Pachauri & L. A. Meyer, Eds.). Geneva, Switzerland.
Tiberius, V. (2008). The reflective life: Living wisely with our limits. New York: Oxford University Press.
Twenge, J. M., Campbell, W. K., & Gentile, B. (2012). Increases in individualistic words and phrases in American books, 1960–2008. PLoS One, 7(7), e40181.
Varnum, M. E. W., & Grossmann, I. (2017). Cultural change: The how and the why. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 12(6), 956–972. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691617699971.
Vervaeke, J., & Ferraro, L. (2013). Relevance, meaning and the cognitive science of wisdom. In M. Ferrari & N. M. Weststrate (Eds.), The scientific study of personal wisdom (pp. 325–341). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7987-7_15.
Vespa, J., Lewis, J. M., & Kreider, R. M. (2013). America’s families and living arrangements: 2012. Current Population Reports, 20, P570.
von Neumann, J., & Morgenstern, O. (1947). Theory of games and economic behavior. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Vosoughi, S., Roy, D., & Aral, S. (2018). The spread of true and false news online. Science, 359(6380), 1146–1151. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aap9559.
Watten, R. G., Syversen, J. L., & Myhrer, T. (1995). Quality of life, intelligence and mood. Social Indicators Research, 36(3), 287–299. https://doi.org/10.1007/bf01078818.
Weststrate, N. M., Ferrari, M., & Ardelt, M. (2016). The many faces of wisdom. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 42(5), 662–676. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167216638075.
Wink, P., & Staudinger, U. M. (2016). Wisdom and psychosocial functioning in later life. Journal of Personality, 84(3), 306–318. https://doi.org/10.1111/jopy.12160.
Wirthwein, L., & Rost, D. H. (2011). Giftedness and subjective well-being: A study with adults. Learning and Individual Differences, 21(2), 182–186. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lindif.2011.01.001.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Grossmann, I., Dorfman, A. (2019). Wise Reasoning in an Uncertain World. In: Sternberg, R., Nusbaum, H., Glück, J. (eds) Applying Wisdom to Contemporary World Problems. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20287-3_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20287-3_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-20286-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-20287-3
eBook Packages: Behavioral Science and PsychologyBehavioral Science and Psychology (R0)