Wisdom
Back to Worldview
Welcome to the Wisdom page
Science based model on how to act wisely
Wise behaviour tends to
- Resolve long-term issues.
- Provide support or contribute to the greater good.
- Do the right thing.
How does wisdom help us achieve the above goals?
- Gain an objective understanding of the situation. The first thing wise individuals do when faced with a new challenge is to speak with many people and collect information about the facts of the problem and its emotional and social aspects. More importantly, they remain calm, respectful, and sympathetic when speaking with others.
- Discover solutions or ways of reaching solutions that maximize common interests. Wise individuals try to balance everyone's concerns. If they have a stake in the outcome, they take a step back to identify their biases and reduce the likelihood of giving self-serving advice.
- Suggest or implement the best solution. Wise individuals do not usually tell people what to do, but they use their skills and experience to offer guidance and support. For instance, they encourage in situations where finding the best solution necessitates trying out different paths and thus requires patience and hope.
We provide a science-based model of wisdom leading towards:
- Wisdom-related knowledge: Knowing life and oneself (e.g., one's needs, strengths, weaknesses, biases). This knowledge is not always conscious but may involve practical intelligence.
- Metacognitive abilities: One, being aware and able to consider different views, interests, values, and goals open-mindedly. Two, being humble. This humility comes from the awareness of the limits of what we can know about life and our power to control or predict it.
- Self-reflection: The capacity to reflect on our thoughts, feelings, and behaviours. And to learn from mistakes, to identify biases, preferences, and blind spots, so that biases do not influence our judgment.
| Source |
|---|
| A Science-BasedGuide to How to ActWisely - Psychology Today - Arash Emamzadeh - 2022 |
.
.
Wisdom from experience
Understanding how wisdom, resiliency and mastery work together to improve a person’s subjective well-being later in life is important given common challenges of aging.
The study found that wisdom in old age “tends to enhance resilience and a sense of mastery and to reduce perceptions of stress directly and indirectly through greater resilience and mastery.”
Resiliencyis defined as older adults’ perceived ability to bounce back after adversity and their sense of mastery or control over their environment, life and future.
Not everyone gets wiser as they get older, A person has to be interested in the deeper meaning of life, open to perceiving things from different perspectives and have an intellectual humility about the fact that there is so much more to know. The really important part is learning from experiences and not everybody is learning from their experiences.
This suggests that coping skills, focusing on silver linings during stressful events while trying to learn from the experience, and feeling in control of one’s life might be possible pathways from wisdom to well-being through a reduction in stress,
| Source |
|---|
| Wisdom as a Resiliency Factor for Subjective Well-Being in Later Life. - M. Ardelt - 2022 |