years, age has been demonstrated to show a zero relation with wisdom- .... Before integrating evidence on the relationship between age and wisdom-.
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Older and Wiser? Integrating Results on the Relationship between Age and Wisdom-related Performance Ursula M. Staudinger International Journal of Behavioral Development 1999 23: 641 DOI: 10.1080/016502599383739 The online version of this article can be found at: http://jbd.sagepub.com/content/23/3/641
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INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF BEHAVIORAL DEVELOPMENT, 1999, 23 (3), 641–664
Older and Wiser? Integrating Results on the Relationship between Age and Wisdom-related Performance Ursula M. Staudinger Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, Germany Evidence from a psychological approach to the study of wisdom is reviewed with regard to the relationship between age and wisdom. Between 20 and 75 years, age has been demonstrated to show a zero relation with wisdomrelated knowledge and judgement. A complex pattern of person characteristics and experiential features have to coalesce in order for wisdom to emerge. However, it is not only growing experience that (on average) comes with age but also decreases in basic intellectual functioning and changes in the personality make-up that seem to undermine rather than facilitate the development of wisdom-related knowledge and judgement. However, there is also some evidence indicating that under certain supportive conditions it may indeed be older people who hold the greatest potential for wisdom.
INTRODUCTION In fairy tales and proverbs, and probably our own stereotypes, old age is often closely intertwined with wisdom or at least a great amount of life experience. The old wise woman and man are images that quickly come to mind when thinking about wisdom. In research on lay theories of wisdom, however, chronological age is less often mentioned as a crucial feature of a wise person (e.g. Holliday & Chandler, 1986; Sternberg, 1990a). In fact, Requests for reprints should be sent to Ursula M. Staudinger, Bildungsforschung, Max Planck Institute, Lentzealle 94, 14195 Berlin, Germany. The author is now at Dresden University of Technology, Dept of Psychology, 01062 Dresden. The data reported in this paper have been collected in the context of the project ‘‘Wisdom and lifespan development’’ located at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development (Principal investigators: P. B. Baltes and U. M. Staudinger). I would like to acknowledge many discussions with my colleagues in this project: Paul B. Baltes, Jacqui Smith, Monisha Pasupathi. Many thanks for help in data collection go to: Gabi Faust, Ami Michelle, Christiane Gu¨nther, Bernhard Leipold, Susanne Bo¨hmig-Krumhaar, Marcel Brass, and Maike Reimer. c 1999 The International Society for the Study of Behavioural Development
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with increasing age, people think less and less that age is an important contributor to the evolution of wisdom (Clayton & Birren, 1980). When considering the relationship between age and wisdom, it seems useful to differentiate between exceptional individuals and ‘‘normal’’ development. Fairy tales, proverbs, and stereotypic images of the wise old woman and the wise old man may be grounded in the observation of unique exceptions rather than group averages. Even though, on average, there may be no increase in wisdom with age, it may still be possible that under certain conditions higher age not only contributes to the attainment of wisdom but is also necessary for it. In other words, it may still be possible that age is a necessary (but not sufcient) condition for the attainment of wisdom. If one approaches the question about the relationship between age and wisdom not from folklore about wisdom but from research on cognitive functioning in adulthood and old age, the expectations are quite different. In the eld of cognitive ageing, the prevailing nding is one of age-related declines in levels of functioning (e.g. Lindenberger & Baltes, 1994; Salthouse, 1991). Such ndings seem in contrast to the efciency with which middle-aged and old adults manage their lives and also govern societies. Consequently, researchers set out to identify areas of intellectual functioning which do not show decline but rather demonstrate stability or even growth across the lifespan (e.g. Baltes, Dittmann-Kohli, & Dixon, 1984; Commons, Sinnot, Richards, & Armon, 1989; Labouvie-Vief, 1985; Perlmutter, 1988). Among others, knowledge and judgement in difcult and uncertain matters of life have been identied as one such area and the highest level of functioning in that domain has been conceptualised as one psychological approach to wisdom (Baltes, Smith, & Staudinger, 1992). In contrast to folklore expectations about the relationship between wisdom and age, approaching the study of wisdom from research on lifelong intellectual development leads to the expectation that age-related stability in performance—let alone growth—is a rare event and is considered exceptional. In the present paper, I will pursue the question of the relationship between age and wisdom by reviewing empirical evidence collected using one psychological approach to the study of wisdom (Baltes et al., 1992). Such ndings may help to disentangle some of the expectations introduced earlier. This paper does not aim at discussing approaches to the study of wisdom (this has been done before, cf. Staudinger & Baltes, 1994; Sternberg, 1990b) but rather focuses on integrating evidence on the relationship between age and wisdom-related performance collected in a number of different studies using the Berlin wisdom paradigm. Clearly, this paradigm is only one of potentially many different approaches to the operationalisation of wisdom. Once other operationalisations of wisdom-
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related performance are advanced, it will be interesting to compare that evidence on the relationship between wisdom and age.
A Psychological Approach to the Study of Wisdom and Wisdom-related Performance Before integrating evidence on the relationship between age and wisdomrelated performance, the Berlin wisdom paradigm is briey described that was used to collect these results. In our work, we proceed from a theoretical conceptualisation of wisdom as expert-level knowledge and judgement in the fundamental pragmatics of life. Note that the term wisdom is reserved to denote only the highest levels of performance. Lower performance levels are labelled as wisdom-related. Knowledge (in its widest sense, cf. Polanyi, 1958) in the domain, fundamental pragmatics of life, entails insights into the quintessential aspects of the human condition and human life including its biological boundaries, cultural conditioning, and intra- as well as interindividual variations. At the centre of this body of knowledge and its application are questions concerning the conduct, interpretation, and meaning of life (for a more detailed description see Baltes et al., 1992; Staudinger & Baltes, 1994). We have outlined a framework of ve criteria (see Table 1) that can be used to evaluate the quantity and quality of wisdom-related knowledge and judgement contained, for instance, in individuals’ verbal responses to difcult and uncertain problems of life. This approach to the psychological study of wisdom received empirical support in a series of studies with regard to reliability and some indication of predictive and external validity (Baltes, Staudinger, Maercker, & Smith, 1995; Smith & Baltes, 1990; Smith, Staudinger, & Baltes, 1994; Staudinger, 1989; Staudinger, Smith, & Baltes, 1992; Staudinger, Lopez & Baltes, 1997; Staudinger, Maciel, Smith & Baltes, 1998a). Two of the ve wisdom-related criteria (rich factual and rich procedural knowledge) that we dene as essential for a body of knowledge to be labelled ‘‘wisdom-related’’ are derived from general conceptions of expert systems (e.g. Chi, Glaser, & Farr, 1991: Ericsson & Smith, 1991). We consider factual and procedural knowledge about the conduct, interpretation, and meaning of life as basic criteria in the sense that they are necessary but not sufcient to dene wisdom-related knowledge and judgement. The three remaining criteria (lifespan contextualism, value relativism, recognition, and management of uncertainty) are metalevel or metacriteria and are considered to be more specic to the domain of fundamental pragmatics of life. They are grounded in analyses of the ancient wisdom literature (e.g. Assmann, 1994; Baltes, 1999), neoPiagetian research on post-formal thought (e.g. Basseches, 1984; Kuhn,
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Basic criteria Factual knowledge
Procedural knowledge
Metalevel criteria Lifespan contextualism
To what extent does this performance show general (conditio humana) and specic (e.g. life events, variations, institutions) knowledge about life matters as well as demonstrate scope and depth in the coverage of issues? To what extent does this performance consider strategies of decision making (e.g. cost-benet analysis), self-regulation, life interpretation, life planning (e.g. means-ends analysis), and of advice giving (e.g. timing, withholding)? To what extent does this performance consider the past, current, and possible future contexts of life and the many circumstances (e.g. culturally graded, age-graded, idiosyncratic) in which a life is embedded and how they relate to each other?
Value relativism
To what extent does this performance consider variations in values and life priorities and the importance to view each person within his/her own framework of values and life goals, despite a small set of universal values such as the orientation towards the well-being of oneself and others?
Awareness and management of uncertainty
To what extent does this performance consider the inherent uncertainty of life (in terms of interpreting the past, predicting the future, managing the present) and effective strategies for dealing with uncertainty (e.g. back-up solutions, optimising gain/loss ratio)?
Note: For further detail see Baltes et al, 1992.
Pennington, & Leadbeater, 1983), and propositions advanced by lifespan developmental psychology (e.g. Baltes, Lindenberger, & Staudinger, 1998). To assess wisdom-related performance, participants are presented with life dilemmas of ctitious characters from three task domains: life planning (Smith & Baltes, 1990); existential life management (Baltes et al., 1995); or life review (Staudinger, 1989). These tasks can vary according to age of ctitious character, normativeness of problem, and life domain. After some training following the suggestions by Ericsson and Simon (1984), participants are asked to think aloud about dilemmas such as: ‘‘Somebody gets a phone call from a good friend who says that he/she can’t go on any more, that she/he has decided to commit suicide. What should the person/ one do and consider?’’ (existential life management); or ‘‘In reecting over their lives, people sometimes realise that they have not achieved what they had once planned to achieve. What should they/one do and consider?’’
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(life review, see also Table 2). Following the rules specied in Staudinger, Smith, and Baltes (1994), a carefully selected, extensively trained, and calibrated rater panel evaluates the answers for the ve criteria designated in our model as indexing wisdom-related knowledge and judgement (see Table 1).
A Working Model for the Study of the Development of Wisdom-related Knowledge and Judgement In addition to the assessment procedure, we also developed a working model to guide the study of the ontogenesis of wisdom-related performance that is of special relevance for the specic topic of this paper. In this model, we distinguish three major categories of antecedents, correlates and/or consequences of wisdom-related performance (see Fig. 1). One group of inuences can be categorised as person characteristics. It subsumes on the one hand, cognitive abilities (uid and crystallised), and on the other, personality characteristics. Both stable and changing characteristics can be distinguished.
Intelligence and the Development of Wisdom. Empirical research on lay theories of wisdom suggests that there is some overlap with the construct of intelligence, but that some features are also unique to the construct of wisdom (e.g. Clayton & Birren, 1980; Orwoll & Perlmutter, 1990; Sowarka, 1989; Staudinger & Baltes, 1994; Sternberg, 1990a). Reasoning ability, practical problem-solving ability, or general competence characterise the overlap between intelligence and wisdom, whereas sagacity (i.e. displaying concern for others, knowing oneself, correcting mistakes; Sternberg, 1990a, p.145), and exceptional understanding or communication skills (Holliday & Chandler, 1986) point to the uniqueness of the wisdom construct in people’s conceptions vis-a`-vis concepts such as intelligence or creativity. Our conceptualisation places wisdom within a model of intellectual functioning that distinguishes between two different but interrelated aspects, the mechanics and the pragmatics of the mind (e.g. Baltes et al., 1992). Within that model, wisdom has been identied as a prototype of the pragmatics of the mind. Thus, we expected indicators of the pragmatics of the mind to be related more strongly to wisdom than indicators of the mechanics. The developmental trajectory of the mechanics has been shown to be age-unfriendly whereas the cognitive pragmatics demonstrate a rather age-neutral trajectory. We conducted two studies with heterogeneous samples that aimed at identifying the psychometric location of our measure of wisdom-related
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FIG. 1. Working model of antecedents, correlates and/or consequences of wisdom-related knowledge and judgement (after Staudinger & Baltes, 1994). Age is among the antecedents but it is not the only one.
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performance in relation to standard measures of intelligence, personality, and their interface. According to ndings from these studies neither uid nor crystallised intelligence showed a strong relationship to knowledge and judgement about difcult life problems (Staudinger et al., 1997, 1998a). At the zero-order level, uid intelligence (as measured, e.g. by Raven Progressive Matrices) was related with r = .29 and crystallised intelligence showed relations for vocabulary at the size of r = .34 and practical knowledge r = .24. When considering unique portions of predictive variance, however, intelligence did not contribute a signicant amount (2%; Staudinger et al., 1997). Certainly, these ndings (as well as those summarised later) need to be seen in the light of the instruments chosen to index intellectual functioning. Other researchers may have opted for other measures. Apart from the size of zero-order and second-order linear relationships between intellectual functioning and wisdom-related performance, we found rst indication for a nonlinear relationship. It seems that when intellectual functioning drops below a certain minimal level, wisdomrelated performance disintegrates (Baltes et al., 1995). So far, we do not have a large enough sample with people above age 75 that would allow a reliable estimate of the intellectual performance threshold. But it seems that a certain level of cognitive functioning is necessary to ascertain access and transformation of stored experiences, which is a precondition for producing wisdom-related knowledge and judgement. In addition to standard measures of intellectual functioning, we have also started to collect information on the relationship between moral reasoning and wisdom-related performance. For instance, we found that moral reasoning (as measured by the German equivalent of the Rest Scales) and wisdom-related performance show a zero-order relationship of r = .29 (Pasupathi & Staudinger, 1998a). This relationship could be entirely explained by measures of personality and intellectual functioning. So it seems that both moral reasoning and wisdom-related performance are related to similar antecedents and/or correlates. However, beyond that common variance both constructs also seem to occupy unique meaning spaces. We also found that the relationship between wisdom-related performance and moral reasoning was moderated by age. It was shown, cross-sectionally, that participants with above median level of moral reasoning ‘‘accumulated’’ wisdom-related knowledge and judgement with age, whereas individuals with lower levels of moral reasoning stayed stable in their wisdom-related performance. Longitudinal data will be necessary to demonstrate that these age differences are indeed reecting developmental processes. Mindful of that major design limitation, one may nevertheless speculate about the mechanisms underlying that moderation effect. It may be the case that people demonstrating high levels of moral
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reasoning bring to bear a certain thinking structure on the incoming information about difcult and uncertain life issues. And consequently are able to accumulate more wisdom-related insight than people who have that thinking structure available in a less pronounced fashion. In another study we investigated the relationship between wisdomrelated performance and a measure of post-formal reasoning (Staudinger, Bo¨hmig-Krumhaar, & Baltes, 1998b). As a measure of post-formal reasoning we chose the Social Paradigm Belief Inventory by Kramer, Kalbaugh, and Goldston (1992) which had been validated using an interview method. Due to time and nancial constraints, we did not have the option to apply two interview measures. We therefore selected this questionnaire. The scales Formism and Mechanism showed no relationship and the scales Relativism and Dialectic showed a relationship of r = .10. Given the difference in assessment method, this correlation may underestimate the relationship between post-formal thinking and wisdomrelated performance. But it is unlikely that even using two performance measures both constructs would be identical. This nding ts with our theory-based expectation that certainly there is overlap with indicators of dialectical, relativistic, or reective judgement and wisdom-related performance. But in contrast to our measure of wisdom-related knowledge and judgement, none of the scales of post-formal thinking addresses specic contents. On the contrary, these scales were explicitly developed to assess cognitive structures and not factual and procedural knowledge in a given domain, that is the fundamental pragmatics of life.
Personality and the Development of Wisdom. With regard to personality, again age-related and age-neutral facets can be distinguished. Empirical research on lay conceptions of wisdom provides evidence for the relevance of trait-like personality characteristics such as absence of emotional lability, presence of open-mindedness, and sociability (e.g. Clayton & Birren, 1980; Holliday & Chandler, 1986). For example, in line with Erikson’s eight-stage epigenetic theory of personality development (e.g. Erikson, Erikson, & Kivnick, 1986) wisdom is identied with mature character and integrity (e.g. Orwoll & Perlmutter, 1990; Sowarka, 1989). In the two psychometric studies mentioned earlier we also collected information on standard personality questionnaires. Indeed, we did nd evidence that openness to experience (r = .42) and personal growth (r = .29) showed a positive zero-order relationship. When considering unique portions of predictive variance, however, personality—as intelligence— contributed a nonsignicant 2% (Staudinger et al., 1997). These results need to be qualied by the selected measures. First, a selection of other constructs may evince different relations with wisdomrelated performance. Second, the size of the relation between wisdom-
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related performance and personality may also be deated due to a difference in method of assessment. Personality was assessed by self-report questionnaires and our measure of wisdom-related knowledge and judgement is performance-based. However, we will see below that measures located at the interface between intelligence and personality— although self-report—did show much stronger relationships. Again, also with regard to personality characteristics, it is not only growth that comes with age. Openness to experience, for instance, has been shown (at least in cohorts up to now) to decline across the lifespan (Costa & McCrae, 1994). And surprisingly, also personal growth has been reported to increase into midlife and decline thereafter (Ryff & Keyes, 1995). In other words, according to current evidence on personality development, it may according to our ontogenetic model not support but rather hamper the development of insight into difcult life matters with age. Thus, we begin to see that the multidimensionality and multidirectionality of development certainly complicates the contribution of chronological age to the development of wisdom-related knowledge and judgement.
The Development of Wisdom and Characteristics located at the Interface between Intelligence and Personality. In addition to intelligence and personality, it is particularly characteristics located at the interface between intelligence and personality, such as creativity, social intelligence, and cognitive styles, that have been identied as important predictors of wisdom. Therefore, we also included measures of that type in one of our psychometric studies mentioned earlier. With regard to creativity, for example, the historical wisdom literature reports that wise solutions are often characterised by the transcendence of the given problem frame or the introduction of a new perspective (e.g. Salomonic solutions, Assmann, 1994). In a similar vein, Arlin (1990) speaks about problem nding (i.e. the delineation of what constitutes the problem, as an important feature of wisdom. It has been shown that intellectual abilities in the realm of social interactions (i.e. social intelligence) are considered in lay theories to be among the most crucial resources of a wise person (e.g. Holliday & Chandler, 1986; Sternberg, 1990a). In the psychometric study mentioned earlier, we found evidence for a substantial relationship (15% unique predictive variance) between wisdom-related performance and creativity, as well as with measures of cognitive style and social intelligence (Staudinger et al., 1997). Cognitive styles, as preferences for using abilities in a certain way, seem to represent the prototypical interface between intelligence and personality. We found that the tendency to be quick to say and do things without forethought (impulsivity) correlated negatively with wisdom-related
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knowledge and judgement (Staudinger et al., 1997). Conversely, the ability to withhold judgement and reect about options (reexivity) seems crucial for the development of wisdom-related performance. Further, as Sternberg suggested, we could show that wisdom-related performance is positively related with a judicial style. This means that wise persons are more concerned with understanding why and what it means when people think and act, than with simply judging it as good or bad (Sternberg, 1990a, p.151). Positive relations were also identied between wisdom-related performance and a progressive rather than a conservative cognitive style. When considering the developmental trajectories of these interface characteristics, less empirical evidence is available but it has been demonstrated that rigidity and dominance increase (Costa & McCrae, 1994; Stevens & Truss, 1985) and creativity seems to slowly decrease after middle adulthood (Simonton, 1990). Once more the developmental trajectories of wisdom-facilitative characteristics illustrate the complexity of the relationship between age and wisdom-related knowledge and judgement.
The Development of Wisdom and Experiential Contexts. The other group of antecedent variables and/or correlates of wisdom-related performance refers to experiential contexts either of the micro- or the macrostructural kind. For instance, experiential contexts that offer extensive training and guided practice with regard to difcult matters of life may contribute to the development of wisdom. Some types of professional training can also be of that sort, as well as certain types of biographies. Challenging experiences or life crises, experiences that are life threatening or threatening human dignity have been claimed to be especially crucial for the evolution of wisdom (e.g. Assmann, 1994; Wollheim, 1984). Experiencing certain events or sequences of events, however, is not enough. The experiencing person has also to reect on, and integrate such experiences, as well as keep them active and up to date in memory, in order to progress on the road to higher levels of life insight (Staudinger & Dittmann-Kohli, 1994). We found that, among other factors, mentors can be very helpful in providing guidance for this further elaboration of experiences (Maercker, Bo¨hmig-Krumhaar, & Staudinger, 1998). In a semistructured interview with wisdom nominees, on their conceptions of the ontogenesis of wisdom, mentors were mentioned frequently. Mentors were described, for instance, as helpful when it came to understanding complicated life constellations and choosing among alternatives. Finally, macrostructural conditions and experiences as they are related to being of a certain age, or having lived through certain historical times also need to be considered. Historical times differ in the degree to which
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they provide for challenging experiences in the sense of, for instance, Jaspers’ Grenzerfahrungen (Jaspers, 1932). Thus, certain cohorts may be at an ‘‘advantage’’ in this respect. We found some evidence for this contention in a study of wise nominees (cf. Baltes et al., 1995). Most of these wise nominees had biographies characterised by different kinds of Grenzerfahrungen related to the Nazi regime in Germany. Consequently, given the historical period that these wisdom nominees had lived through in Germany, they may have had a higher chance of being confronted with a large number of existential life situations than cohorts born towards the end of World War II and later. Age is listed in this group of variables (see Fig. 1) to document that certainly with increasing age the likelihood of having had a greater amount and a certain succession of experiences is higher than at earlier ages. But as mentioned before, experience by itself is not enough for wisdom to develop. Perhaps experiences need to be interpreted, ordered, and used to build more sophisticated knowledge structures. Further, it is still an open empirical question which is the minimal age for high levels of wisdom-related knowledge and judgement to be observed. We completed a study on wisdom-related knowledge and judgement in adolescence (age 14–19) using the same assessment paradigm as with adults. Initial results indicate that even at age 14 there are already individuals who demonstrate performance levels that are just below that of adults (Pasupathi, Staudinger, & Baltes, 1999). In further analyses, we plan to explore how top-level performances at these young ages relate to experiential contexts and person characteristics. This study with adolescents has also demonstrated that age plays a much more powerful role in the early than the later years of wisdom-related development. (The relationship between age and wisdom-related performance in adolescence is r = .46.) The ontogenetic picture seems to become more complicated thereafter. The dynamic between age-related gains and losses seemingly relegates age into the background. Personality (in the widest sense), characteristics of the personality-intelligence interface, and experiential factors come to the foreground. After a rst solid basis of wisdom-related knowledge and judgement has been acquired, further wisdom-related development seems to depend on a still more complicated pattern of inuences.
Wisdom-related Performance and Chronological Age Group Average. With such considerations and ndings in mind, concerning antecedents and correlates of wisdom-related performance, it should not be a surprise that during adulthood we found a nonsignicant correlation between wisdom-related performance and chronological age
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FIG. 2. Across four studies and N = 533 participants a nonsignicant relationship between wisdom-related performance and chronological age (20–89 yrs.) was found (after Staudinger & Baltes, 1996).
(see Fig. 2; Staudinger & Baltes, 1996). This nding has been replicated across four studies investigating 533 individuals and covering an age range of 20 to 89 years. Multiple interpretations of this nding are conceivable. In the following, I will discuss some of them. One interpretation is that cohort effects may have obscured positive age differences. Another and potentially complementary option is that wisdom-hampering conditions that come with age have counteracted the accumulation of experience. In addition to age stability, Fig. 2 also illustrates that above age 80, a somewhat stronger negative relationship seems to emerge. This may support the foregoing proposal that a certain level of functioning in cognitive processing needs to be maintained for wisdom-related performance to remain stable, because above age 80, cognitive processing on average declines considerably. So far, however, the number of participants above age 80 has been too small to draw rm conclusions.
Top Performances. As argued in the introduction, wisdom by denition is not a mass phenomenon and therefore it may be useful to investigate top performances in addition to group averages. When doing so
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we found, across ve studies, that in unselected samples, older people (4 60 yrs.) were as well represented in the top 20% of performances as younger adults, but were not over-represented (Baltes et al., 1995; Staudinger, 1989; Staudinger et al., 1992). Only when age and facilitative experiential context came together (i.e. more time was spent in a wisdomfacilitative context), more older participants than expected by chance were found in the top 20% of performances. In our studies, this was the case for older clinical psychologists (Smith et al., 1994; Staudinger et al., 1992), and wisdom nominees (Baltes et al. 1995).
Wisdom-related Knowledge and Judgement as a Function of Type of Professional Specialisation and Age Following up on the advantage of select groups, we compared—using an age by experience paradigm (Salthouse, 1991)—participants of different ages who, as a function of their professional training and practice, might have had more opportunity to acquire wisdom-related knowledge and judgement than control professionals. As predicted, professional training and practice in a profession concerned with the conduct and interpretation of life (e.g. clinical psychology), contributed to higher levels of wisdom-related performance. Note, however, that although clinical psychologists performed better than the academic control group, they did not perform at a level that could be characterised as ‘‘wise’’. Indeed, as a group, the clinical psychologists obtained only average scores on the wisdom-related criteria. This outcome is consistent with our general theoretical orientation about the ontogenetic sources of the acquisition of wisdom (Baltes & Smith, 1990; Baltes et al., 1992). We argue that a coalition of several personal and contextual factors is necessary to produce advancement in wisdom-related knowledge and judgement. Training and practice in clinical psychology seems to represent only one such wisdom-facilitative cluster. Therefore, future studies exploring the inuence of other professions exposed to experiences and tutelage in fundamental life matters, such as family judges or personnel managers, may also contribute to higher levels of performance in fundamental life pragmatics. Modulator effects due to professional specialisation, of course, may not always be in the positive direction. When comparing performances of young and old clinical psychologists, however, results were not supportive of an additive model of age and type of professional specialisation for the enhancement of wisdom-related knowledge and judgement. In an additive model, older clinical psychologists would have been expected to show the best performance. But older clinical psychologists, on average, performed the same as young clinical psychologists (however, note that, as reported earlier, when considering
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the top performances we obtain a different pattern of results). It is possible that the lack of an additive effect of age and professional specialisation may have been due to the relatively small sample size (Smith et al., 1994; Staudinger et al., 1992). As mentioned earlier, in conjunction with the lifespan development of intelligence and personality, it is also possible that wisdom-inhibitive age-related processes (e.g. decline in cognition, increase in rigidity) counteracted potential wisdom-related advances due to increasing experience. Additional factors may have minimised the likelihood of obtaining more favourable outcomes for older adults and for older clinical psychologists, in particular. For example, because of the cross-sectional design, the age comparison may have involved a disadvantage for the older adults and especially the older clinical psychologists: Age changes and professional specialisation are confounded with cohort effects (Baltes, Reese, & Nesselroade, 1977). The nature of possible cohort effects are, for that study of clinical psychologists, of at least two kinds: (1) they can involve specic cohort differences in knowledge associated with professional training (clinical psychology); and (2) cohort differences in general knowledge about the fundamental pragmatics of life. Although we do not know the direction of these cohort effects, psychological training most likely has changed and professional psychological knowledge has grown across the age/cohorts involved. As the study was cross-sectional, such cohort effects may have masked the joint benecial effect of longer practice in clinical psychology and living longer. In terms of cohort differences in general knowledge about life, the availability of knowledge about the life cycle and human behaviour is likely to be more widespread today than was the case 30–40 years ago. Consequently, the older participants may not have been as well acquainted with this information—except for topics concerning their own age group—as the younger adults. Furthermore, this cohort change in availability of life knowledge implies the possibility of anticipatory socialisation on the part of today’s young adults. Young adults today have potential access to this knowledge without having to make related life experiences themselves. Reverse or interactive relations between age- and cohort-related experiences are also possible, of course. Longitudinal and cohort-sequential work is necessary to clarify the nature of these relations.
Wisdom-related Performance, Chonological Age, and Age of Target Character Age seems to be related to wisdom-related performance in still another manner. Across four studies, we replicated the nding that depending on
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the age of the ctitious character described in the vignette either young or old participants gave highest responses (Smith & Baltes, 1990; Smith et al., 1994; Staudinger, 1989; Staudinger et al., 1992). We have called this pattern of results the age-match effect. Table 2 lists examples of (normative and non-normative) problems with young and old target characters. The agematch effect, however, needs to be qualied in two ways. First, we need to differentiate between life-planning and life-review tasks. With regard to life-planning tasks, it seems that young participants are better on the young-age problem but on the older-age problem young and older respondents do not differ (Smith & Baltes, 1990; Smith et al., 1994). This TABLE 2 Illustration of Life-planning and Life-review Tasks with Young and Older Target Characters Type of Wisdom-related Task Age of Target
Life Planning
Life Review
Young
Elizabeth, 33 years old and a successful professional for 8 years, was recently offered a major promotion. Her new responsibilities would require an increased time commitment. She and her husband would also like to have children before it is too late. Elizabeth is considering the following options: She could plan to accept the promotion, or she could plan to start a family.
Martha, a young woman, had decided to have a family and not to have a career. She is married and has children. One day Martha meets a woman friend whom she has not seen for a long time. The friend had decided to have a career and no family. She is about to establish herself in her career. This meeting causes Martha to think back over her life.
Older
Joyce, a 60-year-old widow, recently completed a degree in business management and opened her own business. She has been looking forward to this new challenge. She has just heard that her son has been left with two small children to care for. Joyce is considering the following options: She could plan to give up her business and live with her son, or she could plan to arrange for nancial assistance for her son to cover child care costs. (non-normative)
Martha, an elderly woman, had once decided to have a family and not to have a career. Her children left home some years ago. One day Martha meets a woman friend whom she has not seen for a long time. The friend had decided to have a career and no family. She had retired some years ago. This meeting causes Martha to think back over her life.
Note: The instruction following each problem is: ‘‘What should one/the person do and consider?’’.
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changes, however, when older experts (e.g. clinical psychologists) or nonnormative older-age problems are under consideration. Older experts outperform young respondents of the control groups (but not the expertise group) on the old life-planning task. Older experts (in this case, clinical psychologists) may, as part of their daily professional practice, be exposed to life planning at younger ages and thus differ from unselected older adults (see also below). And with regard to older-age non-normative lifeplanning problems, older nonexperts indeed outperformed young nonexperts. One can speculate that this superiority of the older participants may be related to the fact that knowledge and judgement about such nonnormative (i.e. rare) events are less generally available than knowledge about normative life problems. Thus, younger people would have had less of an opportunity to engage in anticipatory socialisation regarding nonnormative problems of old age. The pattern of results differs with regard to life-review tasks (Staudinger, 1989; Staudinger et al., 1992). When responding to a lifereview task, young individuals outperformed older respondents on the younger-age task, and vice versa. In the case of life-review tasks, no interaction with level of expertise and normativeness of problem was identied. This differentiation between tasks of life planning and life review may be related to an age-related practice effect. Young adults may, as part of their own life-planning activities, also think far into their future (i.e. consider what it will be like to plan in old age). It is less likely, however, that it is part of their life-review activity to think about how they might review their life in old age. Whereas, older adults quite naturally in their life reviews will cover their lives as young adults as well as their present (older) age and may do so quite often. But they may be less likely to think about their life planning when they were young. Figure 3 depicts the age-match effect separately for life-planning and life-review tasks. The age-match effect suggests that the development of wisdom-related knowledge and judgement appears to entail a component of sequential loss and gain. Given the lifespan view of adaptation to sequentially ordered developmental tasks as well as to sociohistorical change, we may, as we grow older, lose or transform bodies of knowledge, because they are no longer adaptive, or are less frequently practised. At the same time, we are acquiring new and up-to-date bodies of knowledge related to the present life period. Such a view is consistent with general models of lifespan ontogeny which treat development as an ongoing dynamic of gains and losses (Baltes, 1987; Labouvie-Vief, 1982; Uttal & Perlmutter, 1989), associated, for example, with age-graded, history-graded, and nonnormative life events. In sociological models, the familiarity effect is described under the heading of the age-graded allocation of distinct bodies of knowledge by means of age-specic roles, expectations, and spheres of
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FIG. 3. Older respondents outperform young adults on life-review tasks featuring older target character (Staudinger et al., 1992). Whereas in tasks of life-planning, older individuals only outperform young ones if the older life-planning problem is also non-normative (Smith & Baltes, 1990).
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life (Riley, 1985). Thus, the results reported earlier contradict a simple additive model of wisdom-related development with age. One possibility to avoid the fading, and foster the updating, of parts of knowledge related to earlier life phases may be exposure to an age-heterogeneous life context. Staying in touch with earlier phases of the lifespan through relations with succeeding generations and their problems may counteract the fading and outdating of knowledge and judgement concerning earlier life phases.
Certain Performance Contexts may Facilitate Wisdom-related Knowledge and Judgement at Higher Ages So far, we have tried to provide evidence for the contention that, on average, development has wisdom-facilitative as well as wisdom-hampering facets. Given the ndings reported earlier, one may wonder whether performance conditions (e.g. compensating for losses in cognitive processing) are conceivable that support older individuals so that they can improve their wisdom-related performance or make better use of their stored wisdom-related knowledge. One starting point for the construction of such facilitative performance conditions was the everyday ecology of difcult life-problem solving (see also Staudinger & Baltes, 1996). In a survey study, we found that the two strategies mentioned most often when it comes to dealing with difcult life problems were to consult with other people whose advice is valued or to think about the problem by oneself. Consequently, we designed experimental conditions to reect such strategies (Staudinger & Baltes, 1996). In the nal experiment, we asked participants to bring someone to the laboratory with whom they usually discuss difcult life issues. In one condition, these natural dyads had the opportunity to discuss one of our life dilemmas with each other for 10 minutes. Then they were separated and had some more time to think about the problem and the discussion by themselves before they then gave their individual response (actual dialogue and individual thinking time). In another condition, the natural dyad was immediately separated and each partner was presented with a life dilemma. Before responding, participants had 10 minutes to think about the problem and while doing so were asked to consider what others, whose advice they valued, might say to this life problem (virtual dialogue). As compared to the standard condition where participants had to respond spontaneously to our life dilemmas, both experimental conditions just described resulted in performance increases of one standard deviation. In the actual dialogue condition, an age
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interaction was also identied. Older adults were much better able to prot from this condition than younger ones. This effect held up when statistically controlling for length of relationship between partners and level of wisdom-related performance of partner at baseline assessment (Staudinger & Baltes, 1996). No age differences were found in the condition ‘‘virtual dialogue’’. In this rst experiment we did not test for potential underlying mechanisms, thus we can only speculate that older adults may be better able to use the interaction with other minds as a resource and a stimulus for their own response. This experiment provided indication, however, that indeed there are considerable wisdom-related reserves (i.e. performance increases) that can be activated under facilitative circumstances such as interactive-minds conditions. These results concerning supportive performance conditions and their effect on wisdom-related performance, occurring also in older adults, may provide another starting point to disentangle wisdom-facilitative and hampering processes that come with age. Thus, by providing conditions that, for example, compensate for losses in cognitive processes may allow us to see, in a purer fashion, whether and how increases in the amount of experience contribute to advances in knowledge and judgement about difcult life events. Indeed, we do have some evidence that losses in cognition may be one factor contributing to the lack of age differences in wisdom-related knowledge and judgement. When selecting older adults who demonstrate performance in cognitive processing comparable to that of young adults, those older individuals show higher wisdom-related performances than young adults of the same cognitive performance level (cf. Staudinger et al., 1998b). Certainly, such results are tentative because there are very few older individuals who perform at such high levels in cognitive processing. Consequently, it is a highly select group that most likely differs from other older adults in many other respects as well. Also, with respect to wisdom-unfriendly personality developments, we do have some indication that ‘‘compensation’’ seems possible from an intervention study that aimed at increasing performance in one of the ve wisdom-related criteria (i.e. value-relativistic knowledge and judgement). In this study young and older adults were trained to use a knowledgeactivating strategy. Results showed that especially highy dogmatic older participants proted from this intervention with regard to their valuerelativistic performance (Staudinger et al., 1998b). This seemingly paradoxical result can be interpreted in that highly dogmatic individuals may have been especially strict in following the value-relativistic strategy that they learnt during the intervention. Thus, dogmatic application of the knowledge-activating strategy may have channelled the effects of dogmatism such that wisdom-related performance was actually increased rather than decreased.
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CONCLUSION When integrating results from a series of studies of wisdom-related knowledge and judgement using the Berlin wisdom paradigm, it seems fair to say that after about age 20, growing older is certainly not enough to become wiser. In the age range between 20 and 75 or 80 years, we do not, on average, see an age-related increase in wisdom-related performance but stability. This seems surprising given potential advantages that are considered to be related to age as described, for example, by Simone de Beauvoir (1972) in the following way: It probably takes a certain amount of time in order to be able to execute the more elaborate types of life-review processes that allow to gain insight into difcult life problems. As one potential explanation of the nding of age stability, cohort effects were discussed. Currently, no longitudinal (cross-sequential) study on wisdom-related performance is available, and the potential importance of cohort differences cannot be determined. However, an additional, and probably complementary interpretation, has been offered in this article. This interpretation is linked to the dynamics between gains and losses in lifespan development (e.g. Baltes et al., 1998). With age, some wisdomfriendly (e.g. more experience, personal growth) but also wisdomunfriendly changes (e.g. declines in cognitive processing, openness to experience, increase in rigidity) may occur. Thus, in an unselected group of older adults, age-related advantages in wisdom-related knowledge and judgement may be counteracted by age-related declines, and the overall ‘‘wisdom-related developmental balance’’ may approach zero. Findings collected within the Berlin wisdom paradigm indicate that it is a complicated pattern of personality and intellectual capacities, as well as experiential settings, that we need to take into account in order to understand who develops more or less wisdom-related knowledge and judgement. Our studies of convergent and discriminant validity have demonstrated that people with high wisdom-related scores are also creative, endorse a judicial, and nonconservative cognitive style, furthermore, are open to new experiences and show personal growth, as well as having been exposed to existential life events and/or to certain professional settings. In the future, it will be necessary to test these cross-sectional results in a longitudinal data set. For instance, it will be challenging to investigate whether longitudinally all of these correlates contribute to the development of wisdom-related knowledge and judgement to the same degree and conjointly, or whether representing some of these correlates in a pronounced manner may sufce. In that regard, it may also be useful to apply cluster analysis to a longitudinal data set in order to better understand the different roads to wisdom.
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At the same time, it was demonstrated that it is possible to identify performance conditions (e.g. interactive minds, knowledge-activating strategies) that seem to compensate for some of the age-related wisdomunfriendly characteristics and thereby help older adults to activate their wisdom-related potential. Incidentally, similar ndings are available on memory functioning of couples (e.g. Dixon & Gould, 1996). Of course, it may also be possible to identify older people who diverge from the group average in terms of their cognitive and personality development and/or live in settings that foster contact with the succeeding generations and thereby support updating of life insights concerning earlier life phases. Certainly, many open questions remain with regard to the relation between chronological age and wisdom-related performance. Among them is the question of what results a different empirical paradigm for the assessment of wisdom may yield, or the question of cross-cultural comparison. Within our paradigm, we have, for instance, only just begun to analyse more exactly the processes that may be involved in the accumulation of wisdom-related knowledge and judgement. According to our model, the processes of life planning, life review, and life management should play a central role. In that regard, Jacqui Smith has analysed the process of life planning (e.g. Smith, 1996). In my work, I have focused on life review as not only a process to access wisdom-related knowledge and performance but also to develop life insight. It seems that differential usages of the different components of the life review process are crucial in order to understand differential progress in the accumulation of wisdomrelated knowledge and judgement. Some of the life-review components that I have specied are, for instance, (active and reactive) remembering, explaining, evaluating, counterfactual thinking, or emotional distancing (Staudinger, 1999). In a rst study, it was demonstrated that higher levels of wisdom-related performance were related to placing more emphasis on the life-review components of explanation and evaluation. We obtained another glimpse of potential processes through the interaction between moral reasoning and age in predicting wisdom-related performance reported earlier (Pasupathi & Staudinger, 1999). It would be of great value to have longitudinal data available that would allow the study of the different roads to wisdom. Finally, an important question is whether developmental trajectories of general and self-related life knowledge and judgement can be differentiated (see also Staudinger & Pasupathi, in press). My proposition is that they can, and that it may be easier and faster to develop knowledge and judgement about difcult general life issues but more difcult and slower to develop such insight into one’s own life problems. It is also unclear whether both types of wisdom develop independently of each other or whether one is a precondition for the emergence of the other. This
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collection of open questions concerning the relationship between age and wisdom-related performance may provide a glimpse of this uncharted territory and point the way for further study. Certainly, striving to better understand the complex ways in which some people develop wisdom with age whereas others do not, seems worth the effort. Manuscript received June 1998 Revised manuscript received October 1998
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