Reasoning about social conflicts improves into old age

Abstract

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. Specifically, older people are believed to show better competencies for reasoning about social dilemmas and conflicts. Moreover, the idea of aging-related gains in wisdom is consistent with views of the aging mind in developmental psychology. However, to date research has provided little evidence corroborating this assumption. We addressed this question in two studies, using a representative community sample. We asked participants to read stories about intergroup conflicts and interpersonal conflicts and predict how these conflicts would unfold. We show that relative to young and middle-aged people, older people make more use of higher-order reasoning schemes that emphasize the need for multiple perspectives, allow for compromise, and recognize the limits of knowledge. Our coding scheme was validated by a group of professional counselors and wisdom researchers. Social reasoning improves with age despite a decline in fluid intelligence. The results suggest that it might be advisable to assign older individuals to key social roles involving legal decisions, counseling, and intergroup negotiations. Furthermore, given the abundance of research on negative effects of aging, this study may help to encourage clinicians to emphasize the inherent strengths associated with aging.

Fig. 1.

Changes on wisdom-related reasoning across the lifespan. The effect of age on wise thinking (scale of 1–3) for the individual six dimensions in study 1 and study 2. For presentation purposes, age is divided into three categories used during participants’ recruitment: young (25–40 years; n_{study 1} = 89; n_{study 2} = 69; white bars), middle-aged (41–58 years; n_{study 1} = 73; n_{study 2} = 63; striped bars), and older (60–90 years; n_{study 1} = 81; n_{study 2} = 64; black bars). Higher bars indicate higher scores on wisdom-related dimensions. Older participants showed more wisdom than younger (study 1: t = 10.26, P < 0.001; Study 2: t = 3.54, P < 0.001) and middle-aged adults (study 1: t = 7.97, P < 0.001; study 2: t = 3.05, P = 0.003), whereas the contrast between younger and middle-aged adults revealed a marginal trend in the predicted direction in study 1 (t = 1.71, P = 0.09) and no effect in study 2 (t = 0.41, ns.).

Fig. 2.

Age distribution of top performers on wisdom-related reasoning. The relationship between age and aggregate wisdom score among participants who completed study 1 and study 2. Blue represents the upper 20% in overall wisdom-related performance, whereas red represent the lower 80% in overall wisdom-related performance.