What makes a person seem wise?
A global study found that wisdom is perceived similarly across cultures, highlighting reflective orientation and socio-emotional awareness as key traits, which can enhance cooperation and interpersonal relationships.
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A recent global study involving 34 researchers from various disciplines examined how different cultures perceive wisdom. The findings revealed that, despite cultural differences, the core characteristics associated with wisdom are largely consistent worldwide. Participants from diverse backgrounds, including urban college students in Japan and villagers in South Africa, identified two primary traits of wise individuals: reflective orientation and socio-emotional awareness. Reflective orientation involves careful consideration of perspectives and logical reasoning before making decisions, while socio-emotional awareness pertains to understanding and empathizing with others' feelings and viewpoints. The study found that people across cultures tend to rate individuals who exhibit both traits as the wisest. Interestingly, participants often viewed themselves as less reflective but more socially and emotionally aware than the wise figures they evaluated. This research challenges stereotypes about wisdom being purely intellectual or solely social, suggesting that true wisdom is a balance of both. The implications of these findings are significant, as they highlight the potential for shared understanding and cooperation across cultures, which is increasingly important in a globalized world. The study opens avenues for further research into how these dimensions of wisdom can influence leadership, conflict resolution, and personal relationships.
- Wisdom is perceived similarly across cultures, emphasizing reflective orientation and socio-emotional awareness.
- Participants rated wise individuals as those who balance logical reasoning with emotional understanding.
- The study challenges stereotypes about cultural differences in wisdom perception.
- Self-assessments revealed participants viewed themselves as less reflective but more emotionally aware than wise figures.
- Understanding wisdom can foster global cooperation and improve interpersonal relationships.
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20 comments- Books require a "Goldilocks" amount of sustained, slow effort given to one topic. Not too costly to pursue that it is a bodily harm risk, but not trivial either in terms of time and attention investment. This slows down the frenetic nature of a mind that latches onto heuristics.
- By being exposed to different well-formed ideas (especially if you disagree) widens perspective in ways lived experience can't. A reader is uniquely exposed to ideas from other times in human history, from people who are long gone.
- A reader develops a practical trust in themselves, particularly in that they know they take auto didacticism seriously, and won't shy away from intellectual challenges, which the world presents constantly. As such, they make better judgements.
People often think that being booksmart is having your head filled with useless facts, but this is almost opposite from reality.
Another methodology might be attribution: provide a number of stories and ask readers to assess whether actions were due to wisdom, enlightened self-interest, social norms, etc.
Also, stories of Socrates and others long have presented wisdom as a kind of foolishness for outing others’ ignorance or failing to assert one’s own interest in games of mutual self-interest. So a follow-on question for each story would be whether wisdom really led to the best course of action.
The most important aspect of wisdom to me is "making it work" in many areas, in many situations, for yourself and others - throughout your life.
"Dimensions of wisdom perception across twelve countries on five continents"
I say this because I know folks who seem wise (perceived as high IQ and EQ) but lack judgment, because they are working off models of the world that does not comport with reality, so their utterings do not work in real life. Wisdom isn’t about batting a thousand of course but wisdom is about always allowing reality be the teacher.
Many people who present as wise are academics and gurus and they sound really good on podcasts but don’t have much empiricism and experience doing hard things.
Ironically people who are reflective and have gone through the crucible of running a business (or doing something with a lot of headwinds) end up being actually wiser because they have to deal with world (and its flaws) as is, not as they think it should be.
Stonebraker is an opinionated figure in the database world but he has started so many companies and have dealt with the realities of how people use databases that his judgement (which could still be wrong by the way) would carry more weight than a pure database researcher who says all the right things.
These are both weaknesses that I've identified and tried to work on. I've made the most progress on the second (considering the thoughts/feelings of others). The first is a really difficult one for me since I find that hesitation is also a major problem. The balance between acting quickly and acting carefully is difficult.
However, I think a stronger take-away from this study was: "Real wisdom, according to our study, is about finding a balance between thoughtful reasoning, social understanding, and emotional awareness." I believe that the balance between things is the key to wisdom. The people I consider most unwise are those who have a one-size-fits-all approach to everything.
A selfish person cannot be wise. He may know conceptually the important truth that all life is interconnected, but having never experienced that connectedness, he easily forgets this truth when his personal interests are at stake. Someone who is poisoning the river for personal gain using his power and knowledge cannot be wise because he doesn't see the whole picture in which this river returns to what he drinks and thus he is poisoning himself. Once he becomes wise, he also stops caring about himself, for that's the only rational choice in the light of wisdom.
A great story I once heard was someone asking a wise man how they became so wise, and they answered "If someone asked me what color my socks were, I'd look at my socks before answering." E.g., taking more than the normal amount of care to give a correct answer.
Actually being wise? Much harder to tell from the outside.
Obviously this is a fallible standard but it's pretty much all we've got.
Words that I’ve found easier to accept the value of than to extoll. Trying is the first step to failing I guess;)
ADHD and autism got me acting unwise...
Shocker…
Suppose that comment reflects low awareness of the HN community
Take COVID for example, the WHO was universally portrayed as wise. The world went along with their conclusions but Sweden, South Korea and large parts of the US obviously didn’t, despite having little in common culturally. My conclusion is that perceptions of wisdom are more a function of the media than they are any particular culture or nationality.
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