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Is the less travelled road to wisdom necessarily a lonely one? New research suggests not. In the past, the development of wisdom has been associated with solitary internal practices, such as self-reflection and meditation. Recently, however, research has shown that wisdom development is more socially situated than previously thought. This symposium brings together four research talks on interpersonal and socioecological factors that mediate the development of wisdom. First, Weststrate, Glück, and Ferrari investigated intergenerational storytelling as a social practice through which grandparents share wisdom with grandchildren, finding that the transmission of wisdom was relatively high among grandparents’ reasons for storytelling, and that grandchildren commonly learned life lessons through storytelling. Second, Igarashi, Levenson, and Aldwin examined the role of social support in the process of coping with difficult life experiences, identifying two different types of social interactions that facilitated wisdom over short and long timescales. Third, Spännäri examined the shared process of co-constructing wisdom in activity groups of older adults. Her findings suggest that ‘building wisdom’ is a reciprocal, social process that positively contributes to people’s well-being. Finally, Grossmann and Brienza present findings from two studies that examined wisdom and social class, finding that members of lower classes demonstrated higher levels of wise reasoning. The authors explained these findings in terms of socioecological conditions that are likely to facilitate or constrain wisdom. Collectively, these talks highlight social factors at the dyadic, group, and cultural levels that influence wisdom development, opening exciting new directions for research on the social embeddedness of wisdom.
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