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Chapter 6 - Measurement of Wisdom

from Part I - Introduction to Wisdom Theory and Research

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 May 2022

By
Judith Glück
Edited by
Robert J. Sternberg  and
Judith Glück
Robert J. Sternberg
Affiliation:
Cornell University, New York
Judith Glück
Affiliation:
Universität Klagenfurt, Austria
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Summary

This chapter outlines two basic ways to measure wisdom. Self-report measures are quick and easy to administer. Their main disadvantage is that they assess people’s own views of their own wisdom, which may or may not be an accurate representation of their actual wisdom. In fact, highly wise individuals may view themselves as less wise than highly self-confident but not-quite-as-wise individuals! Self-report measures are more useful for assessing attitudes or feelings than for assessing competencies and abilities. Open-ended, problem-based measures of wisdom do not require people to judge themselves. They directly show how wisely participants think about difficult problems. Obviously, the effort and time required to administer, transcribe, and code open-ended wisdom measures is much higher than for self-report measures. Also, when we present people with fictitious problems of fictitious people, emotional involvement will be low and their responses will represent theoretical wisdom that they might not be able to access in a stressful situation. If we interview them about problems from their own life, however, different people may end up talking about very different problems. Currently, researchers are working on measures that involve participants emotionally but remain somewhat standardized with respect to content.

Keywords

wisdomself-report measuresproblem-based measuresopen-endedsocial
Type
Chapter
Information
The Psychology of Wisdom
An Introduction
 , pp. 89 - 104
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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