By Benedict Carey, The New York Times Like any other high school junior, Wynn Haimer has a few holes in his academic game. Graphs and equations, for instance: He gets the idea, fine — one is a linear representation of the other — but making those conversions is often a headache. Or at least it was. For...

By David Weisman, Seed magazine Over the last few decades many Buddhists and quite a few neuroscientists have examined Buddhism and neuroscience, with both groups reporting overlap. I’m sorry to say I have been privately dismissive. One hears this sort of thing all the time, from any religion, and I...

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 Colin McGinn, The New York Review of Books 3/24/2011 Excerpt: Is studying the brain a good way to understand the mind? Does psychology stand to brain anatomy as physiology stands to body anatomy? In the case of the body, physiological functions—walking, breathing, digesting, reproducing, and so on...

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...

Barry Schwartz, TED Talk A summary: In an intimate talk, Barry Schwartz dives into the question "How do we do the right thing?" With help from collaborator Kenneth Sharpe, he shares stories that illustrate the difference between following the rules and truly choosing wisely. See the talk ....

From the New York Times A summary: Scientists have found indications that your ability to jump to intuitive answers — what they term the “Aha!” moment — may be affected by your mood. After watching a humorous video, brain imaging and test results of subjects suggested that a positive mood prepares the...

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 Benedict Carey 12/6/2010, The New York Times The puzzles look easy, and mostly they are. Given three words — “trip,” “house” and “goal,” for example — find a fourth that will complete a compound word with each. A minute or so of mental trolling (housekeeper, goalkeeper, trip?) is all it usually takes...

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 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 Antonino Raffone, Angela Tagini, and Narayanan Srinivasan Abstract: Mindfulness can be understood as the mental ability to focus on the direct and immediate perception or monitoring of the present moment with a state of open and nonjudgmental awareness. Descriptions of mindfulness and methods for...

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...

Can we train professionals to become wise in their respective fields? Do we already do so in some professions, perhaps unwittingly? Baltes and colleagues have conducted a body of empirical work related to wisdom, some of which focuses on wisdom within different professions. For example, Smith, Staudinger...

Wisdom grantees Michael Sargent and Shabnam Mousavi examine the question. Anchoring Judgment in Wise Principles Michael J. Sargent, Bates College, United States I’ve been asked to write a blog entry about a related pair of questions: “Can the unwise recognize wisdom?” and “Can one act wisely without...