Background Work on Wisdom

Abstract

Many societies today are preoccupied with the development of cognitive skills in schoolchildren. In U.S. society, cognitive skills have become practically equated with intellectual skills – the mental bases of intelligence. This equation is a mistake. Given that IQs have been rising (Flynn, 1998), what does our world have to show for it? Judging by the seriousness and sheer scale of global conflict, perhaps not much. There is no reason to believe that increasing IQs have improved people's or nations' relations with each other. The memory and analytical skills so central to intelligence are certainly important for school and life success, but perhaps they are not sufficient. Arguably, wisdom-related skills are at least as important or even more important. Wisdom can be defined as the “power of judging rightly and following the soundest course of action, based on knowledge, experience, understanding, etc.” ( Webster's New World College Dictionary , 1997, p. 1533). Such a power would seem to be of vast importance in a world that at times seems bent on destroying itself. MAJOR APPROACHES TO UNDERSTANDING WISDOM A number of psychologists have attempted to understand wisdom in different ways. The approaches underlying some of these attempts are summarized in Sternberg (1990b). A more detailed review of some of the major approaches to wisdom can be found in Baltes and Staudinger (2000) or in Sternberg (1990b, 1998b, 2000c). The main approaches might be classified as philosophical approaches, implicit-theoretical approaches, and explicit-theoretical approaches.

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