The Important Difference Between Psychologists’ Labs and Real Life: Evaluating the Validity of Models of Wisdom
Abstract: Having studied wisdom for over twenty years now, I think I have learned quite a bit from my own research. If someone describes a difficult life problem to me, I can produce a response that would probably be scored as wise. I consider myself as rather morally grounded, and I have become quite skilled at considering different perspectives, balancing interests, appreciating broader contexts, and knowing the limits of my knowledge. Yet there are moments in my life–family conflicts, endless and useless meetings, interactions with difficult students–where I yell, slam doors, and curse (or at least would like to do so) and where I am neither wise nor act wisely. How is that possible, according to the common model of wisdom proposed by Grossmann et al. (2020)?
In the following, I want to argue that the common model of wisdom is a highly convincing model of wise reasoning, especially under laboratory conditions, but may not cover all that is needed for wise behavior in real life. In the second part of this paper, I discuss the more general question of how we can test whether a model of wisdom is valid.