Associations with positive psychological and social functioning
by Manuela Zambianchi
How might wisdom pair with positive psychological well-being in later late?
My research interests are prevailingly in Positive Psychology, Health Psychology and Time perspective psychology, focused mainly on the emerging adult and positive aging in later life. Positive aging and the psychological factors that can favor it represents one of these topics that has interested me for several years. Within this line of investigation, I have included wisdom as a factor to be explored in its characteristics and its links with well-being, positive functioning, and the social aspects of wisdom- an under researched and yet valorized aspect of older adults. In fact, according to my point of view, wisdom could be an important way of thinking and concrete action for understanding the complex problems that affect contemporary society such as environmental sustainability, multiculturality, bioethics issues. Therefore, wisdom might not only be linked to emotional well-being and happiness in a hedonic key, but also to eudaimonic and social well-being, including active social participation to the society.
The issue of wisdom has been approached from a multidimensional perspective, adopting as research instrument, the Wise Thinking and Acting Questionnaire (WITHAQ), formulated by Moraitou & Efklides (2012). I provided the Italian translation and evaluation on its psychometrics properties. This questionnaire is composed by three dimensions: wisdom as pragmatic knowledge (similar to the concept of pragmatics of life, by Baltes et al., 2003 & 2008), wisdom as dialectical post-formal thinking (related to the post-Piagetian school on intellectual development), and wisdom as the ability to deal with future uncertainty and awareness of mortality.
The dimension of post-formal dialectical thinking in the post-Piagetian School (Labouvie-Vief & Dihel, 2000; Pasqual Leone, 2000) represents a further level of intelligence, after the formal operational stage. This stage can add value to the exploration of wisdom from a scientific perspective. The dialectical post-formal thinking, as noted also by Baltes and colleagues can be considered a high level of intellectual performance and the ability to deal with complex issues, from ethical-moral questions to the dilemmas this specific type of intellectual process can resolve with competence and maturity.
My research, based on these, started with an evaluation of wisdom (assessed by the WITHAQ) in reference to the time perspective psychological construct initially developed by Zimbardo and subsequently expanded by Carelli, Wilberg, and Wilberg (2011). It is composed of six dimensions: positive past, negative past, hedonistic present, fatalistic present, positive future and negative future.
The results of that study, conducted on a sample of elderly people, indicated the presence of positive correlations between wisdom as post-formal thinking and future positive with positive correlations between wisdom as pragmatics of life and past positive and future positive. Wisdom as awareness of future uncertainty demonstrated positive correlations with both past negative and past positive, suggesting a link between negative events and wisdom-further supporting the extant research in wisdom and personal growth after negative or traumatic events.
My most recent publication (Zambianchi, 2022,) explores the positive relationship between wisdom and social well-being, conceived as the quality of the relationship between the individual and the social, proximal and distal context of the elderly person's life. Wisdom understood as competence in the pragmatics of life, of Baltesian origin, appears to be associated with social integration, social contribution and social coherence. Wisdom, in its component of post-formal dialectical thought, parallels the majority of dimensions that make up social well-being on the Keyes scale (1998), and with global social well-being. This result, taking into account the small sample size, seemed to indicate the importance of this intellectual stage of intelligence for the relationship with society, with the complex problems that characterize it. Indeed, complex issues, the presence of ethical dilemmas, strong cultural and value implications in problems require the presence of post-formal dialectical thought. Results indicated if one can grasp the relationships that are underlying the phenomena and go beyond simple solutions based on the elimination of one of the two horn dilemmas, they could seek instead answers that integrate the major issues involved formulating an innovative synthesis or integration.
My most recent research (the results of which I hope to present at the next ECPP 2024 Conference in Innsbruck) concerned the relationship between wisdom and eudaimonic well-being, in the scale developed by the American psychologist Carol Ryff (1989; 2014). Wisdom, according to historical theories of a philosophical nature such as that of the Latin philosopher Seneca, maintained that the wise person is capable of personal growth, of openness to experience, of keeping a life plan alive even in old age, and of developing profound knowledge of oneself, a dimension at the heart of the eudaimonic theory on well-being. Results indicated the vision of the ancient philosophers, as the dimensions of wisdom explored by the WITHAQ questionnaire are positively correlated with Ryff’s Psychological Well-being (PWB) dimensions and with the global PWB score.
A further aspect of this research evaluated the relationship between wisdom and creativity in problem solving. A question that has fascinated me for several years is the relationship between experience and creativity, or between fluid intelligence and crystallized intelligence. Where does wisdom fit in? According to the Baltes hypothesis, wisdom requires something more than experience which is necessary but not sufficient. In the post-Piagetian school, post-formal dialectical thought can integrate aspects of a problem relevant information in issues particularly on an ethical-moral level in new and perhaps creative ways. The intellectual capacity that is expressed when post-formal thinking is achieved could intercept the theme of creativity, in this case the ability to reorganise in a new way, various elements or information and return an innovative vision or resolution. In this case, wisdom as post-formal dialectical thinking that is measured by the WITHAQ should have the highest correlations with perceived effectiveness in creative problem-solving, assuming the activation of common underlying thought processes. The results of the study supported this hypothesis: the highest correlations were found between the creative problem-solving scale and the dimension of the WITHAQ which measures wise thinking as a post-formal intellectual ability.
Further, an ongoing current project which aims at investigating wisdom and its relationships with sustainability in old age in a pilot analysis with a small sample of 64-year-old participants seems to indicate positive associations between wisdom and positive attitudes toward sustainable behaviours. If confirmed by a broader sample, this could suggest the relevance of wisdom also for the adoption of sustainable behaviours for saving the planet.
Overall, the conception that older adulthood is not only characterized by losses and decline, but also by gains and participation to the society where wisdom, its cultivation and implementation (eg. through active effort, Zambianchi, 2016) can be of benefit not only to the individual, but also to the society itself.
About the author: Manuela Zambianchi is an adjunct professor in the Department for Life Quality Studies at the University of Bologna, Italy. Her research interests lie in positive psychology and wisdom. She is also currently teaching Psychology at University Institute ISIA, Faenza, Italy. You may contact her about this article and her wisdom research at manuela.zambianchi@unibo.it or zambianchi_manuela@isiafaenza.it
References
Baltes, P.B., & Kunzmann, U. (2003). Wisdom. ThePsychologist, 16, 131-132.
Baltes, P., & Smith, J. (2008). The fascination of wisdom: Its nature, ontogeny, and function. PerspectivesonPsychologicalScience, 3(1), 56–64.
Carelli, MG., Wiberg, B., & Wiberg, M. (2011). Development and construct validation of the Swedish Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory. European Journal of Psychological Assessment, 4, 220-227. Doi: org710.1027/1015-5759/a000076.
Keyes, C. L. M. (1998). Social well-being. Social Psychology Quarterly,61, 121-140.
Labouvie-Vief G., & Diehl, M. (2000). Cognitive complexity and Cognitive –Affective Integration: related or separate domains of adult development? PsychologyandAging, 15, 490-504.
Moraitou, R., & Efklides, A. (2012). The Wise Acting and Thinking Questionnaire. The cognitive facets of wisdom and its relations with Memory, Affect and Hope. Journal of Happiness Study, 13,849–873. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-011-9295-1
Pasqual-Leone, J. (2000). Mental attention, consciousness, and the progressive emergence of wisdom. Journal of Adult Development, 7(4), 241–254.
Ryff, C.D. (1989), “Happiness is everything, or is it? Explorations on the meaning of psychological wellbeing”, JournalofPersonalityandSocialPsychology, 57, 6, 1069-1081, doi: 10.1037/0022- 3514.57.6.1069
Ryff, C.D. (2014), Psychological well-being revisited: advances in the science and practice of eudaimonia. PsychotherapyandPsychosomatics, 83, 1, 10-28, doi: 10.1159/000353263
Zambianchi, M. (2016). Life skills education in età anziana. Un progetto di ricerca azione partecipata per il potenziamento del pensiero critico Life skills education in old age. (A participated-action research for improving the critical thinking). Counseling, 9 (2), DOI:10.14605/CS921615
Zambianchi, M. (2020). Time of Wisdom and time for Wisdom. The role of time perspective on wisdom in old age. MediterraneanJournalofClinicalPsychology, 8(3). https://doi.org/10.6092/2282-1619/mjcp-2598
Zambianchi, M. (2022).The Role of Wisdom for Enhancing Social Well-being and Positive Ageing in Old Age. AppliedPsychologyBulletin, 295. DOI 10.26387/bpa.2022.00008
Zambianchi, M., Ronnlund, M., & Carelli, MG.(2019). Attitudes Towards and Use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) Among Older Adults in Italy and Sweden: the Influence of Cultural Context, Socio-Demographic Factors, and Time Perspective. Journal of Cross-CulturalGerontology, 34, 295-306. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10823-019-09370-y
