By Josh Tapper, Guelph Mercury News August 10, 2010 Although adults older than 65 face challenges to body and brain, the 70s and 80s also bring an abundance of social and emotional knowledge, qualities scientists are beginning to define as wisdom. As Carstensen and another social psychologist, Fredda...

By Charles Q. Choi "The dozen students and scientists spread over an area called Furnace Creek looked like cyborgs in floppy hats scrabbling over the boulders. Before hammering chips off rocks, they inspected them with magnifying lenses held up next to eyeglasses sporting miniature cameras and infrared...

The fall, 2009 issue of Itineraries is titled "The Harvest of Wisdom" and focuses on elder wisdom. Table of Contents Caroline Bassett Elder Wisdom Drew Leder The Tao of Longevity Margaret Owen Thorpe Bird Wisdom Robert C. Atchley Serving from Spirit Jane F. Gilgun The Yellow Brick Road of Not...

By Val Farmer | INFORUM "There is one quality that improves with age. That quality happens to be a wonderful virtue. It is wisdom. Wisdom encompasses other virtues. Wisdom incorporates other virtues that are essential to happiness. A wise person will have embraced principles of love, service and...

By Joanne C. Giblin Abstract: This article defines wisdom and despair as choices for cognitively intact older adults. Some individuals are able to integrate the conditions of old age while others respond in ways that inhibit effective integration. The conscious aging theory, as well as Erikson's...

By Lewis P. Jordan Abstract: There is very little research on Alaska Native (AN) elders and how they subjectively define a successful older age. The lack of a culturally-specific definition often results in the use of a generic definition that portrays Alaska Native elders as aging less successfully...

After giving an overview of Western, Eastern, and culturally inclusive theories of wisdom, this chapter summarizes the theoretical and empirical research on the association between aging and wisdom and the effect of wisdom on well-being. Cross-sectional and longitudinal studies show that wisdom characteristics...

By Monika Ardelt Abstract: This study examined whether (a) older adults are wiser than college students, (b) college-educated older adults are wiser than current college students, and (c) wise older adults show evidence of personal growth. Using a sample of 477 undergraduate college students and 178...

by Igor Grossmann, Jinkyung Na, Michael E. W. Varnum, Denise C. Park, Shinobu Kitayama, and Richard E. Nisbett It is well documented that aging is associated with cognitive declines in many domains. Yet it is a common lay belief that some aspects of thinking improve into old age. Speci fi cally, older...

This research uses an autobiographical approach to examine the relation of age to several aspects of wisdom. In Study 1, adolescents', young adults', and older adults' wisdom narratives were content-coded for the types of life situations mentioned and the forms that wisdom took. Types of...

Although wisdom is thought to be a strong predictor for many attributes of aging well, the concept of wisdom still lacks a comprehensive, directly testable scale. Quantitative and qualitative interviews with a.sample of 180 older adults (age 52-plus) were conducted to develop a three-dimensional wisdom...