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Review
. 2018 Oct 10;73(8):1393-1403.
doi: 10.1093/geronb/gbx140.

Measuring Wisdom: Existing Approaches, Continuing Challenges, and New Developments

Judith Glück  1
Affiliations
Review

Measuring Wisdom: Existing Approaches, Continuing Challenges, and New Developments

Judith Glück. J Gerontol B Psychol Sci Soc Sci. .

Abstract

The question how wisdom can best be measured is still open to debate. Currently, there are two groups of wisdom measures: open-ended performance measures and self-report measures. This overview article describes the most popular current measures of wisdom: the Berlin Wisdom Paradigm, the Bremen Wisdom Paradigm, Grossmann's wise-reasoning approach, the Three-Dimensional Wisdom Scale, the Self-Assessed Wisdom Scale, and the Adult Self-Transcendence Inventory. It discusses the specific challenges of both open-ended and self-report approaches with respect to content validity, convergent and divergent validity, concurrent and discriminant validity, and ecological validity. Finally, promising new developments are outlined that may bridge the gap between wisdom as a competence and wisdom as an attitude and increase ecological validity by being more similar to real-life manifestations of wisdom. These new developments include autobiographical approaches and advice-giving paradigms.

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Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Score distributions of four wisdom measures. The horizontal axis reflects the response scale for each measure. Note: N = 94 for the BWP; N = 170 for the 3D-WS, ASTI, and SAWS. See Glück et al. (2013) for further information. ASTI = Adult Self-Transcendence Inventory; BWP = Berlin wisdom paradigm; SAWS = Self-Assessed Wisdom Scale.
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