An empirical approach to wisdom processes

Abstract

In psychology, wisdom gradually received more and more interest form researchers. The first who have directed their attention to this area were the Greek philosophers, but gradually theoretical models were developed based on empirical data and components that explain the development of wisdom. In this paper, we used Ardelt's approach, which takes into account both the eastern and western approaches regarding wisdom. Within a sample of students (N = 100, mean age = 24 m, SD = 6.44), wisdom was investigated in relation to several phenomena that could be involved in the development of wisdom and wisdom processes. Thus, wisdom is studied in relation to general metacognition, moral metacognition, cognitive empathy, emotional empathy, irrationality and cognitive flexibility. The results were found to be in accordance with the hypothesis of affective empathy, identifying a significant positive relationship between the two variables. One must consider that the rest of the correlations were negative and significant, thus drawing attention to other possible factors that might be important in describing wisdom. Variables evaluated were found to explain the variance of wisdom.