Thin-Slice Measurement of Wisdom

Abstract

Objective Measurement of Wisdom within a short period of time is vital for both the public interest (e.g., understanding a presidential election) and research (e.g., testing factors that facilitate wisdom development). A measurement of emotion associated with wisdom would be especially informative; therefore, a novel Thin-Slice measurement of wisdom was developed based on the Berlin Paradigm. For about 2 min, participants imagined the lens of a camera as the eyes of their friend/teacher whom they advised about a life dilemma. Verbal response and facial expression were both recorded by a camera: verbal responses were then rated on both the Berlin Wisdom criteria and newly developed Chinese wisdom criteria; facial expressions were analyzed by the software iMotion FACET module. Results showed acceptable inter-rater and inter-item reliability for this novel paradigm. Moreover, both wisdom ratings were not significantly correlated with Social desirability, and the Berlin wisdom rating was significantly negatively correlated with Neuroticism; feeling of surprise was significantly positively correlated with both wisdom criteria ratings. Our results provide the first evidence of this Thin-slice Wisdom Paradigm’s reliability, its immunity to social desirability, and its validity for assessing candidates’ wisdom within a short timeframe. Although still awaiting further development, this novel Paradigm contributes to an emerging Universal Wisdom Paradigm applicable across cultures.

Sadder but wiser: Emotional reactions and wisdom in a simulated suicide intervention

“…None of our participants met this criterion: in fact, highest score on some criteria was only 4 (see Table 1). Actually, the Berlin wisdom rating for these participants' performance in suicide scenario was significantly lower than the previous performance of another group of participants who advised a friend about an unrealistic singing career scenario (see: Hu, Ferrari, Wang, & Woodruff, 2017), t(70) = −2.56, p = .013. Further analyses revealed that participants' rating on the meta-criterion "value relativism" for the suicide scenario was significantly lower than in the singing scenario about life-planning, t(70) = −8.59, p < .001.…”

“…In this study, we assessed the relationship between Chinese adults' wisdom performance and their emotional reaction, assessed in real‐time with advanced software. We used a second‐person perspective “Thin‐Slice paradigm,” that a previous preliminary study has shown to be reliable and valid (Hu, Ferrari, Wang, & Woodruff, ). Additionally, we also explored the Chinese participants' proposed reasons for continuing to live, which to our knowledge are not considered within the Berlin paradigm.…”

“…An unpublished study by Grossmann (2018) found that self-reported emotionality was significantly positively correlated with wiser reasoning about participants' own unresolved conflicts, which seems to support Stange and Kunzmann. In this study, we assessed the relationship between Chinese adults' wisdom performance and their emotional reaction, assessed in real-time with advanced software. We used a second-person perspective "Thin-Slice paradigm," that a previous preliminary study has shown to be reliable and valid (Hu, Ferrari, Wang, & Woodruff, 2017). Additionally, we also explored the Chinese participants' proposed reasons for continuing to live, which to our knowledge are not considered within the Berlin paradigm.…”

Development and validation of a brief self-assessed wisdom scale

“…The first one is performance measure of personal wisdom, also known as Berlin wisdom paradigm, involves the analysis of wisdom-related performance in laboratory setting with trained raters to transcribe the responded data introduced in the 1980s [6,7]. In recent years, this explicit theory based method was utilised and adapted in different contexts, such as in Australia [8], China [9], Germany [10] and United States [11]. The focus of this paper is the second approach, i.e., latent factor analyses of wisdom that mainly rely on using self-reported survey methods to assess wisdom, such as Self-Assessed Wisdom Scale (SAWS) [2], Threedimensional Wisdom Scale [12], Practical Wisdom Scale and Transcendent Wisdom Scale [13] and Wisdom Development Scale [14], etc.…”

Development and Validation of a Brief Self-Assessed Wisdom Scale

“…The first one is performance measure of personal wisdom, also known as Berlin wisdom paradigm, involves the analysis of wisdom-related performance in laboratory setting with trained raters to transcribe the responded data introduced in the 1980s [6,7]. In recent years, this explicit theory based method was utilised and adapted in different contexts, such as in Australia [8], China [9], Germany [10] and United States [11]. The focus of this paper is the second approach, i.e., latent factor analyses of wisdom that mainly rely on using self-reported survey methods to assess wisdom, such as Self-Assessed Wisdom Scale (SAWS) [2], Three-dimensional Wisdom Scale [12], Practical Wisdom Scale and Transcendent Wisdom Scale [13] and Wisdom Development Scale [14], etc.…”