Wisdom and emotion

Abstract

Do wise individuals differ from less wise individuals in how they react to fundamental problems emotionally? Are there "wise" forms of emotion regulation? Do wise individuals understand the emotional aspects of fundamental problems differently than less wise individuals? Do they use their knowledge of emotions differently and for different purposes? To begin to address these and related questions, this chapter first defines the terms "emotion" and "emotional competence." Subsequently, it gives an overview of psychological approaches to the definition and assessment of wisdom. The chapter considers two lines of wisdom research. A first has conceptualized wisdom as a mature form of personality and developed self-report questionnaires to assess such traits. A second line of research has conceptualized wisdom as a highly developed form of knowledge or reasoning and developed performance-based tests to assess the characteristics of wisdom-related knowledge. The chapter then discusses theoretical and empirical work on correlates of individual differences and age-related changes in wisdom. It ends with a discussion of the limitations of the currently available studies and provides ideas for future work.

Read the chapter: Kunzmann, U., & Glück, J. (2019). Wisdom and emotion. In R. J. Sternberg & J. Glück (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of wisdom (p. 575–601). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108568272.027