Wisdom, far beyond popular conception, has already been studied by various scholars who study intelligence and psychology, even wisdom can develop in scientific terms, which is done in a slightly different way from the simple attribution of knowledge that we usually transmit to the eldest.
In this article we will talk about what the science of psychology means when we talk about wisdom, a concept difficult to study because of its diffuse limitations and also because of the difficulty of the scientific method itself to access internal elements and fewer objectives.
- Wisdom can be defined as the possession.
- At an expert level.
- Of a set of knowledge acquired about the pragmatism of life.
- Many authors have dedicated themselves to identifying the components associated with wisdom.
The elements usually grouped around wisdom are
Experts say that the two most relevant factors for wisdom are exceptional understanding, judgment, and ability to communicate, so there may be people who are wise but who, throughout their life story, do not have a great knowledge of the world.
All of the above, therefore, requires a construct of wisdom that alludes to emotional and interpersonal aspects, that is, a definition that goes beyond the cognitive.
For these two authors, wisdom implies sagacity, consideration, involvement with others, insight, intuition, knowledge of one’s own limitations, experience, a logical and rational mind, good problem solving, and the ability to learn from mistakes. The wise man seeks information and puts it to good use. of the data you have at your disposal.
Holliday and Chandler’s definition has a greater tendency to link wisdom to cognitive factors and abilities that allow a person to solve problems correctly and often even brilliantly.
Sternberg, for his part, defines the sage as a sensitive person, sociable, with good judgment and ability to communicate, who understands life, who learns from experience and is able to combine different points of view.
In addition to all these interpersonal and emotional skills, he also defines the wise person as an intelligent, self-cultured person with great abilities in general.
We are able to assess a person’s level of wisdom with standardized tests and qualitative procedures. There are two main test or task groups:
An example of a task to evaluate wisdom might be
“Joo is an 18-year-old boy who decides to marry his boyfriend, although he has only known him for nine months. “
From this statement, the person must think aloud about what John must discuss in order to make this decision, from Joo’s point of view he reconstructs the story, the moments of history, the possible explanations that led Joo to make this decision. and the assessments that can be made of it.
Many authors have spoken of the components of wisdom, although few agree with everything about it, but does this not solve the problem of analyzing how a person can improve these components?Even speaking of those with the greatest consensus.
For example, what needs to be worked on and that deserves more weight in decision-making is contextualism, relativism and uncertainty, the only decision-making factor in which they could be formed was the relativism and calm or tranquility it offers.
However, the goal of wisdom training still seems very risky
One part that standardized tests don’t usually measure are emotional and emotional factors. Tasks are good for evaluating different dimensions of intelligence, such as logical-mathematical or spatial intelligence.
On the other hand, many definitions of wisdom still survive today without a very broad consensus around one of them, remains an open field and is therefore a difficult area to measure.
This disparity in the assessment of wisdom can lead us to obtain very widened results depending on the method, group or theory behind the scientific studies carried out.