Wisdom, bias, and balance: Toward a process-sensitive measurement of wisdom-related cognition

Abstract

Philosophers and behavioral scientists refer to wisdom as unbiased reasoning that guides one toward balance of interests and promotes a good life. However, major instruments developed to test wisdom appear biased, and it is unclear whether they capture balance-related tendencies. We examined whether shifting from global, de-contextualized reports to state-level reports about concrete situations provides a less biased method to assess wise reasoning (e.g., intellectual humility, recognition of uncertainty and change, consideration of the broader context at hand and perspectives of others, integration of these perspectives/compromise), which may be aligned with the notion of balancing interests. Results of a large-scale psychometric investigation (N = 4,463) revealed that the novel situated wise reasoning scale (SWIS) is reliable and appears independent of psychological biases (attribution bias, bias blind spot, self-deception, impression management), whereas global wisdom reports are subject to such biases. Moreover, SWIS scores were positively related to indices of living well (e.g., adaptive emotion regulation, mindfulness), and balancing of cooperative and self-protective interests, goals (influence-vs.-adjustment) and causal inferences about conflict (attribution to the self-vs.-other party). In contrast, global wisdom reports were unrelated or negatively related to balance-related measures. Notably, people showed modest within-person consistency in wise reasoning across situations/over time, suggesting that a single-shot measurement may be insufficient for whole understanding of traitlevel wisdom. We discuss theoretical and practical implications for research on wisdom, judgment and decision making, well-being, and prosociality.

Phronesis and the Knowledge-Action Gap in Moral Psychology and Moral Education: A New Synthesis?

“…This function is highly situation-specific, which means that traditional wisdom research in psychology, which homes in on more global capacities, is mostly irrelevant to the derivation of a phronesis construct. A notable exception here, however, is the recent Situated WiseReasoning Scale, developed by Brienza, Kung, Santos, Bobocel, and Grossman (2017). The Situated Wise-Reasoning Scale operationalises the elements of wise reasoning, by shifting from global, decontextualised reports to state level reports about concrete situations (see also Grossmann, 2017).…”

Wisdom in a complex world: A situated account of wise reasoning and its development

“…Past studies of wise reasoning suggest that the major components of wise reasoning depicted in Figure all load on a single latent factor (Brienza et al, ; Grossmann et al, ; Grossmann & Kross, ; Kunzmann & Baltes, ). However, it is possible that different situations may call for somewhat different components.…”

“…Further, wise reasoning is also associated with greater well‐being, as indicated by greater life satisfaction, emotional balance, and greater longevity (Grossmann et al, ; Grossmann, Gerlach, & Denissen, ), while intelligence showed little relationship to any of these outcomes (Grossmann et al, ). These findings suggest that while wise reasoning is associated with many individual difference measures, it involves some unique processes, with a unique nomological network not accounted by other existing measures (for a broader discussion of such relationships, see Brienza et al, ).…”

“…However, self‐reports of a desirable quality like wisdom may not be accurate and are subject to social desirability bias (Redzanowski & Glück, ; Taylor, Bates, & Webster, ; Zacher, McKenna, & Rooney, ). Asking people to concretely relive an experience and reconstruct its context before answering questions about wise reasoning (Brienza, Kung, Santos, Bobocel, & Grossmann, ) circumvents this problem by reducing biases and errors in retrospection (Schwarz, Kahneman, & Xu, ).…”

“…How does wise reasoning related to other personality constructs? Reasoning wisely is associated with greater agreeableness (Brienza et al, ; Levenson, Jennings, Aldwin, & Shirashi, ) and openness (Kunzmann & Baltes, ; Levenson et al, ; Mickler & Staudinger, ; Wink & Staudinger, ), as well as less neuroticism (Webster, Bohlmeijer, & Westerhof, ). The relationship of wise reasoning to performance on standardized intelligence and working memory tasks has been modest (Grossmann et al, , ; Staudinger, Lopez, & Baltes, ).…”