Characteristics of Wisdom

Materials quoted or paraphrased from: Sternberg, Robert J., ed. Wisdom: Its Nature, Origins, and Development. New York: Cambridge, 1990.

  1. Approaches informed by philosophical conceptions of wisdom
    1. Wisdom Through the Ages — Daniel N. Robinson (History of Wisdom)
      1. Plato:
        1. sophia: philosopher's knowledge, devotion to pursuit of truth
        2. phronesis: practical knowledge, locates prudent actions, resists passions
        3. episteme: scientific knowledge, the nature of things and the principles governing behavior
      2. Aristotle: "character" revealed by "deliberated choices and dispositions," rightly disposed passions, strives for moral perfection/virtue
      3. Stoic & Epicurean: seek secure serenity, knows how to achieve minimization of suffering, fully reconciling oneself to governed events of cosmos; acceptance without knowing why
      4. Christian: a state of being, to be touched by Divine wisdom conveying timeless and boundless verities
      5. Scientism & Romanticism: Divine gift, discovered through introspective processes & manifested in words/works of beauty, without empiricism
    2. The Psychology of Wisdom: An Evolutionary Interpretation — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Kevin Rathunde
      1. Cognitive Process
        1. deals with enduring universal truths not fleeting phenomenon
        2. attempt to find how various aspects of reality are related to each other — unspecialized
        3. implies a hierarchical ordering of truths & action directed at those truths
      2. Virtue — socially valued behavior pattern
        1. knowledge of the connectedness between cause and effect determines course of action
        2. basis of morality, long term applications for individual and society
      3. Personal Good — personally desirable state or condition for here and now
        1. needed for attainment of reward: to get real pleasure from health, satisfaction from fame, good use of money
        2. contemplation of universal order is intrinsically reveling of self and universe
    3. Wisdom as Integrated Thought: Historical and Developmental Perspectives — Gisela Labouvie-Vief
      1. greater awareness of complexity and tolerance of ambiguity
      2. acceptance of responsibility for conflict — sees symmetry of power
      3. subjective and communal are a necessary part of one's endeavors to be objective
      4. combination of free emotional expression with conscious relation leads to better acceptance of another's separate feelings
      5. evolves flexible degree in which conflicts between impulse & norm, self & society, inner & outer are acknowledged and integrated within a more autonomously chosen structure
      6. ability to obtain an androgynous sexuality, knowledge of inner world
      7. moral and spiritual leadership — generative investment in others
      8. mental processes that hold the paradoxical tension of thought being both immanent and transcendent
      9. ability to see through & beyond individual uniqueness & specialness into those structures relating us in our common humanity
  2. Approaches Informed by Folk Conceptions of Wisdom
    1. Toward a Psychology of Wisdom and it Ontogenesis — Paul B. Baltes and Jacqui Smith (Wisdom Model)
      1. Everyday Definition: Good judgment and advice about important but uncertain matters of life.
      2. Theoretical Definition: An expert knowledge system in the domain, fundamental life pragmatics (e.g. life planning, life management, life review)
      3. Functional consequence: exceptional insight into human development and life matters, exceptionally god judgment, advice, and commentary about difficult life problems.
      4. Family of 5 criteria
        1. Rich Factual Knowledge: general and specific knowledge about the conditions of life and its variations
        2. Rich Procedural Knowledge: general and specific knowledge about strategies of judgment and advice concerning matters of life
        3. Life Span Contextualism: knowledge about the contexts of life and their temporal (developmental) relationships
        4. Relativism: knowledge about differences in values, goals, and priorities
        5. Uncertainty: knowledge about the relative indeterminacy and unpredictability of life and ways to manage
    2. Wisdom in a postapocalyptic age — Michael J. Chandler with Stephen Holliday
      1. Knowledge of many different things, not a specialized knowledge — broader form of human understanding, can cut across particulars arriving at a view having the widest scope of possible applications
      2. ability to peer through gloom of present age & recover preapocalyptic vision of knowledge types we have forgotten long ago — ability to see past, present uses of knowledge, and see different forms in future
    3. Wisdom and its relations to intelligence and creativity — Robert J. Sternberg (from a survey of college professors and students)
      1. Reasoning ability: has the unique ability to look at a problem or situation and solve it; has good problem-solving ability; has a logical mind; is good at distinguishing between correct and incorrect answers; is able to apply knowledge to particular problems; is able to put old information together in new ways; has a huge store of information; has the ability to recognize similarities and differences; has rationality (reason clearly); makes connections and distinctions between ideas and things
      2. Sagacity: displays concern for others; considers advice; understand people through dealing with a variety of people; feels he or she can always learn from other people; knows self best; is thoughtful; is fair; is a good listener; is not afraid to admit making a mistake, will correct, learn, and go on; listens to all sides of an issue
      3. Learning from Ideas and Environment: attaches important to ideas; is perceptive; learns from other people's mistakes
      4. Judgment: acts within own physical and intellectual limitation; is sensible; has good judgment at all times; thinks before acting or making decisions; is able to see long term outcomes; thinks before speaking; is a clear thinker
      5. Expeditious Use of Information: is experienced; seeks out information, especially details; has age, maturity, or long experience; learns and remembers and gains information from past mistakes of successes; changes mind on basis of experience
      6. Perspicacity: has intuition; can offer solutions that are on the side of right and truth; is able to see through things; has the ability to understand and interpret his or her environment
      7. Sees limitations yet seeks truth & evaluates information to see how it relates to truth, welcomes ambiguity, and tries to understand phenomenon in depth
    4. The study of wise persons: integrating a personality perspective — Lucinda Orwoll and Marion Perlmutter
      1. Uncommon levels of self-awareness & psychological growth — mature and integrated personalities
      2. Ability to move beyond individual concern to more collective/universal issues— egocentered to universal apprehension of reality
      3. Perception of understanding with humanitarian and global feelings of concern
      4. Self-development 7 self-transcendence
  3. Approaches informed by psychodevelopmental conceptions of wisdom
    1. The loss of wisdom — John A. Meacham
      1. knowing that one does not know because there is no limit to what can be known
      2. knowledge is fallible belief — strives to construct new uncertainties, doubts, and questions of what might be known
      3. adding to knowledge one hold while at same time recognizing there is much one doesn't know
      4. attitude taken by persons toward beliefs, values, knowledge, information, abilities, & skills that are held, a tendency to doubt that these are necessarily true or valid and to doubt that they are an exhaustive set of those things that could be known
    2. Wisdom and Reflective Judgment: Knowing in the Face of Uncertainty — Karen Strohm Kitchener and Helene G. Brenner
      1. movement beyond universal issues that can be known with certainty through process of logical/formal reasoning to understanding issues of knowing in the face of uncertainty
      2. an awareness of unknown & implications for real world problem solving and judgment
      3. recognition of the presence of unavoidably difficult problems inherent in the lives of adults
      4. a comprehensive grasp of knowledge characterized by both breadth and depth
      5. a recognition that knowledge is uncertain and that it is not possible for truth to be absolutely knowable at any given time
      6. a willingness and exceptional ability to formulate sound, executable judgments in the face of this uncertainty
      7. intellectual ability allowing few individuals to make particularly exceptional judgments about uncertain problematic life issues
      8. more than logic & is generally uncalled for in well-structured problems
    3. Wisdom: The Art of Problem Finding — Patricia Kennedy Arlin
      1. The Search for Complementarity: "Problem finding is essentially the establishment of the need for a new and highly complex mental program." (Finding similarities between things previously isolated.)
      2. The Detection of Asymmetry: Ability to detect a lack of balance "where the casual observer notes no differences or finds a conventional explanation to be satisfactory. Genius is not a requirement for wisdom. Wisdom involves a sensitivity to both symmetry and asymmetry. Wisdom is present in the noticing of subtle features that make a difference in problem solving definitions and ultimately in problem solving."
      3. Openness to Change: "Wisdom has as one of its requirements the willingness to remain open to receive new information and on the basis of that information to be willing to change one's worldview. Perhaps wisdom arises from the opportunity to experience changes in our own beliefs and assumptions- changes that help us realize that the ideas and priorities that seem so clear today will probably be modified as a function of new experiences.
      4. Pushing the Limits: "Wisdom is not attributed to judgements or solutions because of their close conformity to an acknowledged standard of right or wrong. Wise decisions, solutions, and judgements are often acknowledged as wise because they push these standards to their limits or create types of metastandards that redefine the acceptable."
      5. Importance: a sense of taste for problems that are of fundamental importance
      6. Conceptual Preferences: the preference for certain conceptual moves (see p 237 in the 1990© for a long list of wisdom characteristics)
    4. An Essay on Wisdom: Toward Organismic Processes that Make It Possible — Juan Pascual-Leone
      1. ultimate possible achievement of a normal person's growth
      2. category describing moment in development in development when psychological system fully coordinates across experiential contexts & alternatives forms/modes of processing
      3. anchored in present, has dialectically integrated into a manifold totality the multiple aspects of his/her self-experience & has done so not just conceptually but experientially, historically, & culturally
      4. appears when dialectical integration reaches sufficient breadth & cohesion over person's control processes & over his/her storehouse of informational processes (cognitive, affective, inter/intrapersonal, religious, existential,cultural, etc.)
      5. ability to resolve dialectical contradictions that emerge in certain contexts, to apply these resolutions to different life contexts in order to build a more autonomous self
      6. appears with emergence of progressively higher levels of affect/self-control which with advancement brings about a better dialectical integration of personality
      7. a weakening of ego centered characteristics, leading to a greater intuition & empathic understanding of others, self, world, and nature as equally strong concerns
    5. Conceptualizing Wisdom: The Primacy of Affect-Cognition — Deirdre A. Kramer
      1. maintains a certain set of assumptions at social reality & is able to effectively apply these to a variety of domains in order to resolve problems arising in his/her own experience, advise others, shape social institutions, & seek meaning and continuity in experience
      2. integration of thoughts and feelings (interdependent cognition and affect)
      3. enables individuals to adopt and fosters resolutions to tasks of adult life
      4. Functions
        1. enable one to resolve dilemmas & make decisions
        2. advising others dilemmas/decisions
        3. management and guidance of society
        4. life review/evaluation
        5. question meaning of life
      5. Precursors
        1. recognize individuality
        2. seeing context
        3. cooperative, empathic strategy for interpersonal interaction
        4. recognize possible for change
        5. recognize necessity of integrated cognition and affect
  4. Integration of Approaches and Viewpoints
    1. The Elements of Wisdom: Overview and Integration — James E. Birren and Laurel M. Fisher
      1. multidimensional construct; blending of cognitive, affective, & conative (volition) elements
      2. not dominated by emotions, so maintains reflective state, generating alternative solutions to problems
      3. weighs known & unknowns, resists overwhelming emotion wile maintaining interest & carefully chooses when & where to take action (see table of comparison on pp. 325-6 in aforementioned copyright date for list of overviews of chapters)