Performance-based measures of wisdom: State of the art and future directions
Abstract: Wisdom is a human strength that many have prized, since antiquity, in both philosophical and religious writings. Proceeding from the idea that wisdom encompasses both elements, character and knowledge, personality and competence, this chapter argues that an appropriate empirical assessment of wisdom ideally involves two types of measures: self-report questionnaires to assess wisdom as personality, and performance-based methods to assess wisdom as knowledge. Seen from this perspective, two aspects of wisdom research appear troublesome, namely, the one-sided focus of most wisdom studies on either self-report measures or performance-based measures and the increasing exclusive reliance of empirical research on the self-report method in recent years. One reason for the rise of self-report studies could be that performance-based methods are costly in terms of both data collection in the context of individual interviews and data processing via relatively complex coding procedures. To facilitate a comprehensive understanding of the potential strengths of performance-based wisdom measures, the chapter begins with a brief discussion of the alternative approach to wisdom: the conceptualization and measurement of wisdom as a part of the individual's personality.