By Alison Gopnik, the New York Times An excerpt: Humphrey, an emeritus professor of psychology at the London School of Economics, may not have solved the mind-body problem, and there is something to be said for the awkward geekery of philosophical analysis and experimental data. But he has some really...

By Douglas Fox, Scientific American An excerpt: ... One might think, for example, that evolutionary processes could increase the number of neurons in our brain or boost the rate at which those neurons exchange information and that such changes would make us smarter. But several recent trends of investigation...

By Carl Zimmer, Discover magazine The past and future may seem like different worlds, yet the two are intimately intertwined in our minds. In recent studies on mental time travel, neuroscientists found that we use many of the same regions of the brain to remember the past as we do to envision our future...

By Carl Zimmer, Discover magazine 3/24/11 Excerpt: Teenagers are a puzzle, and not just to their parents. When kids pass from childhood to adolescence their mortality rate doubles, despite the fact that teenagers are stronger and faster than children as well as more resistant to disease. Parents and...

By Shawkat M. Toorawa, The Chronicle of Higher Education "Then I saw the crystal poet / Leaning on the old sea-rail; / In his *** lay death, the lover, / In his head, the nightingale." I cited those lines in an introductory course I taught last year, one that attracts potential Near Eastern...

By Martin Sandbu, The Financial Times January 13, 2011 Aristotle took a dim view of business. Sometimes, of course, business people give the impression of being equally unconcerned with Aristotle’s main concern: living a good life. Just witness the grilling Bob Diamond, chief executive of Barclays, received...

By Harvey Schachter The Globe and Mail , 12/1/2010 Lao Tzu, Freud, Elizabeth I, and Marx are an unlikely quartet of leadership gurus. But they are a sample of an eclectic group of writers and leaders whose words are captured in Harvard University professor Barbara Kellerman’s compilation Leadership:...

by Jessica Marshall, Discovery News The "intelligence" of a group can be measured, according to a new study, and it has little to do with the brain power of its individual members. What makes a team more intelligent has more to do with the group's interactions. More equal participation...

By Jonah Lehrer, Wired October 12, 2010 There’s a fascinating new paper in Psychological Science by the Dutch psychologist Ap Dijksterhuis on the virtues of unconscious thought when it comes to predicting the outcome of soccer matches. It turns out that the conscious brain – that rational voice in your...

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...

Although humans strive to be wise, they often fail to do so when reasoning over issues that have profound personal implications. Here we test the hypothesis that psychological distance enhances wise reasoning, attitudes and behavior under such circumstances. Two experiments demonstrate that cueing people...

By Sherry L. Beaumont Erikson’s (1968) supposition about the importance of mature identity for wisdom was examined by testing the hypothesis that informational identity processing is uniquely associated with wisdom and with related positive subjective experiences (mindfulness and savoring). Emerging...

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 Judith Glück and Susan Bluck Objectives. This study examined individual differences in laypeople's conceptions of wisdom using a person-oriented approach, as previous studies using a priori group variables may have underestimated the variability. Although there is a tradition of examining people's...

By Matthew Taylor, Glen Bates and Jeffrey Dean Webster The authors reply to Ardelt's comment (see record 2011-06003-006) on their original paper (see record 2011-06003-001) comparing the 3D-WS and SAWS and discuss the SAWS relative to cognition, critical life experiences, and their use of subscale...

By Alessandro Demaio The respectful, appropriate use of local wisdom (LW) in health promotion increases penetration and longevity of positive behavior change. Collaborations based on mutual respect, flexibility and trust between health program organizers, traditional and local practitioners, and the...

“Wisdom is the freedom and the ability to make the kinds of choices that move our life forward and benefit the planet.” Wisdom is actually a “How” we make our best choices and not a “what we choose or “why we choose it.” Wisdom is the antidote for the choices that keep us mired in a world of negative...

By Ursula M. Staudinger and Judith Glück Abstract: Wisdom represents a fruitful topic for psychological investigations for at least two reasons. First, the study of wisdom emphasizes the search for the continued optimization and the further cultural evolution of the human condition. Second, it exemplifies...

By Matthew Taylor, Glen Bates and Jeffrey Dean Webster Abstract: Two recently developed scales of wisdom were compared on their abilities to have their dimensional structure replicated and to predict relevant personality (i.e., forgiveness) and life satisfaction (i.e., psychological well-being) variables...

By Monika Ardelt Abstract: In a commentary on Taylor, Bates, and Webster's article, the author (a) clarifies the development and assessment of the Three-Dimensional Wisdom Scale (3D-WS); (b) describes the difference between the essential components of wisdom and its predictors, correlates, and consequences;...

By Valerie Tiberius At end the of July, 2010, a small group of philosophers and psychologists met at the Rosewood Inn in Hastings, Minnesota to talk about wisdom. This series of blog posts highlights key questions that emerged from that discussion. Please join our conversation by commenting on this discussion...

By Valerie Tiberius At end the of July, 2010, a small group of philosophers and psychologists met at the Rosewood Inn in Hastings, Minnesota to talk about wisdom. The workshop included five sessions. The first four sessions were organized around presentations by a philosopher and a psychologist on the...

by Keith Whitaker, Defining Wisdom Grantee Wise Counsel Research— www.wisecounselresearch.org To continue our discussion of wisdom and wise counsel in the context of comedy, on June 1 our reading group discussed Kingsley Amis’ Lucky Jim . We began with the question, “What is Jim’s luck?” and with the...

by Keith Whitaker, Defining Wisdom Grantee Wise Counsel Research— www.wisecounselresearch.org After our recent conversation about the Fool in King Lear , our reading group decided to pursue wisdom in a comic context, with the character of Jeeves—the seemingly omniscient “gentleman’s gentleman”—in the...

“Defining Wisdom” is an interdisciplinary research program within the Arete Initiative at The University of Chicago. Twenty groups of researchers from a wide range of disciplines have been awarded two-year grants under the program to investigate the nature and benefits of wisdom. As a group, we have...

As a philosophical concept and cultural ideal, wisdom has enjoyed a long history. It has also acquired a prestige such that one cannot speak of “bad wisdom” or “undesirable wisdom.” Wisdom is good – and where it is lacking, the lack is always regretted. Part of what makes wisdom prestigious is its elusive...

At the Defining Wisdom Network Meeting in June 2009, participants were asked to come up with a series of questions about wisdom that might shed light on the broad issues of our project. One participant asked the following question: “Has the world become more or less wise in the last 50 years? Or is the...

I just came back from our first conference of “wisdom scholars” in Chicago, and was fascinated by the topics that the wisdom grant winners are investigating. I thought I would try to blog about a topic that allowed me to mention several of them. Wisdom commonly is thought of as something that one accumulates...