The development of wise action in adulthood

Development of Wise Decision Making The Development of Wise Decision-Making Across Adulthood: An Intersubjective Framework Michael F Mascolo Merrimack College To appear in Long, J S., Lynam, A., & Kallio, E (in press) The International Handbook of Adult Development and Wisdom Oxford Michael F Mascolo Department of Psychology Merrimack College North Andover, MA 01845 mascolom@merrimack.edu 978-979-8745 (cell) Development of Wise Decision Making THE DEVELOPMENT OF WISE DECISION-MAKING ACROSS ADULTHOOD: AN INTERSUBJECTIVE FRAMEWORK Wisdom is what you need to understand in order to live well and cope with the central problems and avoid the dangers in the predicament(s) human beings find themselves in (Nozick, 1989, p 269) Why study the development of wisdom? Of what value is studying the development of wisdom over the course of adulthood? We live in an age of complexity, connection and contradiction The sheer amount of information produced in the past decades eclipses that produced in the entire span of human history By any standards of evaluation, science has been remarkably successful in producing an unanticipated abundance of knowledge Technological innovation has transformed personal and cultural life, producing both unprecedented convenience and accelerated environmental threat As a result of electronic communication, the world is both more connected and more divided than at any point in human history Our awareness of human diversity has created cultural clashes that threaten the more-or-less shared values and norms that hold societies together Many have suggested that technology and innovation have evolved faster than our individual and collective capacities to manage them Given the enormous success of science and technology, it is not surprising that many would seek scientific and technological solutions to our social problems However, while science and technology will no doubt be essential in facing human predicaments, by themselves, they are morally neutral Science seeks to study what is rather than what ought to be; technologies are mere tools for meeting human wants and needs Against this backdrop, if wisdom is what we need “to cope with the central problems and avoid the dangers” (Nozick, 1989) of human problems, then what the world needs is more wisdom rather than merely more knowledge or technology From this perspective, discussions of wisdom take on deep societal importance If studying wisdom is important, how are we to study it? In recent times, there has been a turn in many circles toward the use of scientific methods to seek answers to moral questions (Hunter & Nedelisky, 2018) This practice occurs, for example, when scholars seek to identify the biological foundations of morality, the evolutionary foundations for a good society, or to establish a moral science Such pursuits immediately run up against a series of deep conceptual problems These include the fact/value distinction (Gorski, 2017; Putnam, 2002) and the naturalistic fallacy (Clipsham, 2014; Qu, 2019) Science is typically based upon the desire to identify objective descriptions of the world – that is, facts that can be identified independent of the values and biases of the observer Given this distinction, the naturalistic fallacy occurs individuals seek to infer what ought to be (i.e., values) from descriptions of what is (i.e., empirical facts) If this is so, then how is it possible to develop a science of morality? Social science can provide us with descriptions of how people think about moral issues, how psychological and brain activity mediate the process of making moral judgments, and even how the capacity for moral judgment evolves in species, collectives and individuals It can even provide empirical Development of Wise Decision Making knowledge that can help people make moral judgments and decisions However, science itself cannot tell us what is good, worthy, right or moral To the extent that science is constrained to describing what is, it cannot prescribe what ought to be The same issues arise in attempts to study wisdom from the standpoint of empirical science Wisdom is an evaluative concept A wise decision is one that anticipates the possibility of maximizing the good As such, wisdom is not an extant something that can be measured through careful observation Instead, what we call “wise” – like all evaluative categories – is a reflective product of human relational experience (Mascolo & Di Bianca-Fasoli, 2020) It arises discursively as people work together to identify what it means to live good lives Any psychological analysis of wisdom must make reference to the concept of wisdom as it is already defined within the intersubjective and pre-empirical matrix of human social relations Thus, if we are to study wisdom scientifically, we cannot so within the framework of traditional objectivist science (Ichinose, 2017; Kristjánsson, 2012; Mascolo, 2017) An intersubjective framework provides a way to reconcile the fissure between the scientific and humanistic study of wisdom An intersubjective analysis is informed by the idea that the ways in which we construct knowledge about people is fundamentally different from how we come to know physical objects and bodies (Brinkman, 2011; Martin & Sugarman, 1989) At base, our knowledge of psychological states comes not from empirical observation but from our already existing human capacity for intersubjective engagement – the capacity to share, coordinate, represent and mutually-incorporate meaning and experience between people (Di Paoli & de Jaegar, 2007; Mascolo, 2017; Matusov, 1996; Trevarthen & Aitken, 2001) The capacity to understand human experience is a mediated one (Wertsch, 2007): it occurs as people draw upon existing systems of meanings represented in an already shared psychological lexicon (Cipolletti, Procter & Mascolo, 2020) This paper is divided into two parts Part I contains a critical analysis of psychological research on wisdom and its development Although research on wisdom has exploded in recent decades, I argue that the scientific quest to “measure wisdom” does more to obscure than illuminate the nature of wisdom While most researchers agree that wisdom is not something that can be directly observed, many nonetheless seek ways to “measure wisdom” empirically (Ardelt, 2003; Glück, 2018; Glück et al., 2013; Thomas, Bangen, Ardelt, & Jeste, 2017; Webster, 2019) Such measures are often created by (a) asking respondents to identify qualities of “wise persons”, and then (b) developing questionnaires to assess the extent to which people exhibit commonly nominated qualities (Bluck & Glück, 2005; Denny, Dew & Kroupa, 1995) The result of such research is a kind of epistemic circularity: wisdom is defined in terms of lay beliefs about types of qualities exhibited by people who can be considered wise; people are then evaluated as wise to the extent that they are judged to exhibit those characteristics Although they purport to measure wisdom, such scales not seek to assess the extent to which people are actually capable of making decisions that might be evaluated as “wise” Given the prevalence of the value of objectivity in scientific research (Levitt et al., 2020), this is not surprising Assessing the wisdom of decision-making would require the invocation of value Development of Wise Decision Making judgments, thus violating the scientific norm of objectivity One might argue conventional research on wisdom is informed by value judgments; however, value presuppositions are largely implicit, hidden or unacknowledged (Cirillo & Wapner, 1986; Richardson & Woolfolk, 1994) This is not an intentional practice on the part of researchers; wisdom research is designed to fulfill the objectivist requirements of the discipline The problem lies in the fact/value distinction that informs psychological science in the first place (Brinkman, 2011; Kristjánsson, 2012; Mascolo, 2017) Part II of the paper attempts to address these problems It contains a description of an intersubjective framework for understanding psychological science and the psychological analysis of wisdom in particular An intersubjective approach begins with an analysis of the shared and contested meanings of “wisdom” as an a priori intersubjective category – complete with its evaluative connotations Based on such an analysis, it is suggested that a wise decision is one that, informed by conceptions of the good, anticipates, coordinates and maximizes the good over the bad across the full range of concerns that define a given problem Based on this definition, the discussion turns to a psychological study assessing development changes in wise decision-making in adults between the ages of 18-80 In so doing, drawing on models of skill development (Fischer, 1980; Mascolo & Bidell, 2020; Mascolo & Fischer, 2015) we identify developmental changes in the structure of wise decision-making over adulthood The status of decisions as “wise” is evaluated from both first-person and socio-normative points of view PART I: A CRITICAL BUT SYMPATHETIC REVIEW OF THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WISDOM The crisis of our times, in short—the crisis behind all the others—is the crisis of science without wisdom (Maxwell, 2005, p 32) The study of wisdom has traditionally been understood as the province of humanities – and particularly of philosophy The scientific status of psychology has its origins in the severing of psychology from philosophy (Robinson, 1995) The empirical methods of the psychologist were seen to be more reliable than the “armchair” speculations of the philosopher While scientific psychology has the advantage of subjecting theoretical claims to empirical evidence, it encounters difficulties when it seeks to address humanistic questions that not lend themselves to direct empirical analysis In this section, we explore the implications of this problem for the study of wisdom Wisdom in Philosophy Ryan (1998, 2008) has provided a cogent taxonomy for understanding the various ways that philosophers have approached the concept of wisdom In the Western tradition, Plato provides among the earliest accounts of wisdom as epistemic humility In the Apology, (West/Plato, 1979), Socrates interviews many people who might be considered wise In each encounter, Socrates finds that those who are typically considered wise to lack knowledge that they claimed to have Socrates’ experiment affirms the Oracle of Delphi’s statement that there is no man Development of Wise Decision Making wiser than Socrates: Socrates is wise precisely because he is aware that he knows nothing In the case of Socrates, wisdom is to be found in epistemic humility Wisdom is broadly understood to be informed by knowledge This raises the question of the type of knowledge that is necessary for a person or decision to be counted as wise Ryan (2008) distinguishes among different forms of knowledge that scholars have invoked in discussions of wisdom These include theoretical, factual, and practical knowledge, as well as knowledge about how to live a good life Theoretical knowledge consists of abstract and a priori knowledge of the nature of reality It has generally taken to involve knowledge of what is necessary and true about the physical or spiritual world Factual knowledge is a posteriori knowledge that is derived from or consistent with theoretical knowledge Practical knowledge is useful human knowledge about how to conduct oneself in everyday life While theoretical, factual and practical knowledge are often seen to be important components or prerequisites for wisdom, they are not necessarily defined by concepts of the good Thus, while other forms of knowledge may be prerequisites for wisdom, wisdom is most closely associated with knowledge of how to live well An additional conception of wisdom builds on the idea that deliberation alone is an insufficient condition of wisdom From this view, wisdom involves the ability to put deliberation in to successful action A wise person is thus one who is able to live a good life based on principles of virtue Aristotle’s conception of wisdom incorporates each these various forms of knowledge Aristotle identifies two forms of wisdom: sofia and phronesis Sophia consists of theoretical or philosophical wisdom It is a form of higher-order abstract knowledge about the most valued qualities and objects in the world Sophia makes use of both nous (intellect, intelligence or intuition) and episteme (scientific knowledge) Nous is the source of the a priori and apodictic first principles Episteme consists of universal and unchanging knowledge about objects in the world Phronesis consists of practical wisdom, which consists of useful knowledge about how to live well in the world Both sofia and phronesis are directed at valued forms of knowledge As a form of higher-order knowledge, sofia is directed toward universal knowledge of the cosmos beyond everyday life In contrast, phronesis consists of practical knowledge Phronesis not only incudes useful knowledge about how to live but also knowledge of how to live well As such, it requires knowledge of the moral virtues – what is morally good in human affairs Phronesis is tightly coupled with the concept of prudence Prudence is an intellectual virtue Prudence is often understood to function as the means of practical wisdom A person who is prudent not only knows the virtuous ends toward which her actions are directed, she also is able to select the moral means that will move action toward that end In this way, prudence is both moral and worldly It describes the process of linking conceptions of the good with concrete, particular and contextualized circumstances Thus, for Aristotle, The phronimos is good at deliberation: [s]he can sum up a situation, weigh up various factors, and work out what to to promote or achieve his objectives Often enough, because of his [or her] experience and wisdom, [s]he can see straight off the best thing to do, without having to go through a process of deliberation Development of Wise Decision Making While wisdom implies comprehensive knowledge, it is possible for a person to have practical wisdom (phronesis) without theoretical wisdom (sofia) In fact, in matters of everyday life, even though theoretical wisdom reflects knowledge of the highest value, such knowledge may not be useful in everyday affairs The person with theoretical wisdom may understand explanatory first principles, but may not be able to put them into practice; in contrast, the person with practical wisdom may know useful practices, but may lack the explanatory framework to understand why such practices are useful To illustrate this concept, Aristotle provides the example of person who knows that light meats are beneficial to health but does not know which meats are light: “Such a [person] is not likely to make you well as one who knows that chicken is good for you.” Thus, for Aristotle, while theoretical knowledge is concerned with identify truths, practical knowledge or reasoning is concerned with identifying and acting upon that which is moral and human goods (Kenny, 1992) Although wisdom involves deliberation, the capacity to merely engage in virtuous thought is insufficient to qualify one as a virtuous person A virtuous person is one who is able to put virtues into action; it is a matter of cultivating particular, long-lasting dispositions to act virtuously A wise person is one who is prudent not simply in a particular science (episteme) or field (techne), but who is able to act prudently across situations and domains of activity The wise person has comprehensive and flexible knowledge – knowledge that allows a person to adjust his or her actions to the particular demands of a given situation Can Wisdom Be Studied Scientifically? Many psychological analyses of wisdom begin with a review of philosophical conceptions, the intent of such reviews is more to provide historical background rather to than inform the content of psychological theory Because philosophical analyses are seen as speculative and pre-empirical, they are often seen as largely irrelevant to the scientific process From this perspective, psychological science offers something that goes beyond the “arm chair” speculations of the philosopher namely the prospect of identifying wisdom through empirical analysis (Bergsma & Ardelt; 2012; Glück, 2018; Staudinger & Glück, 2011; Webster, 2014; 2019) As an empirical science, psychological science is founded upon the value of objectivity The goal of an objective description is to describe only what is publicly observable, without either adding or taking away information, using a theoretically neutral observation language – one that is free of values, bias or prejudgment Attempts to study wisdom scientifically raises a series of problems First, unlike objects and bodies that exist in the physical world, wisdom is not an observable entity; as an evaluative concept, it has no empirical content Second, scientific analyses of wisdom immediately run up against the fact/value distinction (Putnam, 2002) While science seeks unbiased accounts of what is, wisdom consists of knowledge about how to lead a life that is good If this is so, how is it possible to identify what wisdom is apart from the values that define what constitutes the good? Third, as an evaluative concept, wisdom is a product of human experience As such, its Development of Wise Decision Making study raises the perennial problems related to the “objective” analysis of modes of “subjective” experience Psychologists have developed three broad ways address the problems of defining and assessing wisdom The first involves assessing lay concepts of wisdom (Sternberg, 1985; Glück & Bluck, 2011) The second seeks to “measure wisdom” through the use of psychometrically-validated self-report scales (Webster, 2014, 2019) The third method seeks to advance theoretical models of wisdom (Baltes & Kunzmann, 2003; Cheraghi, Kadivar, Asgari, & Farzad, 2015; Li & Wang, 2017; Li, Wang, Wang, Shi & Xiong, 2020) and test them by assessing how people perform in various activities that are assumed to require wise decision making (Baltes & Straudinger, 2000; Staudinger & Leipold, 2019) While each approach has generated a wealth of useful empirical data, the issue of how these studies speak to the nature of wisdom remains unclear Lay Conceptions of Wisdom The first approach is to assess everyday folk conceptions of wisdom If we cannot identify wisdom “objectively” from the “outside-in”, perhaps it is possible to identify the nature of wisdom from the “inside-out” (Bluck & Glück, 2005) Toward this end, researchers ask respondents to articulate their own conceptions of wisdom and to describe experiences of wisdom in their own lives One common task involves asking respondents to identify qualities of people whom they would regard as wise (Paulhus, Wehr, Harms & Strasser, 2002) In their review of research on implicit theories of wisdom, Bluck and Glück (2005) identify four common themes that respondents nominate when describing the attributes of wise persons These include insight, a reflective attitude, concern for others, and real-world skills People who are nominated as wise are typically understood to be people who are able to provide advice or guidance to others (Jason et al., 2011) Understandings of wisdom begin to develop in the preschool years and become increasingly differentiated, integrated and articulated over the course of development Young children tend to think of wisdom in terms of concrete forms of intellectual ability (e.g., “smart”), social goodness (e.g., being “nice”, “honest”), concern for others (e.g., “helping others”), self-control and rule following (Glück, Bischof, & Siebenhüner, 2012) First-graders were more likely than older children to regard wisdom as something associated with the elderly In comparison to Austrian children, Iranian children tended to emphasize adherence to social norms more often than Austrian children, who tended to emphasize cognitive aspects of wisdom (Asadi, Khorshidi & Glück, 2019) By adolescence, teens identify wise actions in themselves and in others in terms of moral categories (e g., “It was the right thing to do”), the provision of support to others (e.g., “When my girlfriend broke her bone, I called the ambulance”), intellectual accomplishment (e.g., “I got an A on a test”) and other increasingly sophisticated categories (e.g., “I did not fight back when they were beating me”) Autobiographical accounts have revealed age-related and developmental differences in the ways in which people understand wisdom and its role in their everyday lives Research has Development of Wise Decision Making shown age-related changes in how people represent wisdom in their lives Interestingly, researchers have shown shifts in how people represent wisdom as they confront the end-oflife Wright, Breier, Depner, Grant, & Lodi-Smith (2018) reported that illness and impending death was an occasion for many hospice patients to reconsider priorities Patients regarded the end of life as an opportunity for growth, reflection of the meaning of their lives, and mindful appreciation of the present moment Montross-Thomas, Joseph, Edmonds, Palinkas & Jeste (2018) asked hospice patients to explain how their illness impacted their conception of wisdom The investigators described many patient responses as reflecting a balance between active acceptance and simultaneous growth This work illustrates how the shifting circumstances related to end-of-life prompt forms of novel reflection that can be regarded by both experiencers and investigators alike as forms of wisdom Beyond developmental variation in lay conceptions of wisdom, researchers have identified both similarities and differences in conceptions of wisdom in different cultures (Brezina, 2010; Ferrari & Alhosseini, 2019; Takahashi & Overton, 2005; Yeng & Intezari, 2019) For example, Ferrari, Abdelaal, Lakhani, Sachdeva, Tasmim, & Sharma (2016) reported similarities and differences in how Canadians and Indians explained why Gandhi could be considered wise While Canadians tended to emphasize practicality and intelligence, Indians tended to speak of an integration of benevolence, practicality and intellectual values Hu, Ferrari, Liu, Gao & Weare (2018) showed that people from mainland China tended to define wisdom in terms of cultural values involving “spirituality and the elaboration of generalized mindsets toward the world (e.g., an “attitude of benevolence”; a “mindset toward disengagement”) (see also Weidong & Haitao, 2003) The Limits of Lay Knowledge To what evidence can we refer to support claims about the nature of wisdom? If we cannot observe wisdom directly, perhaps we can approximate such observation by asking respondents about their conceptions of wisdom Such a method would appear to have at least two advantages First, it allows researchers to anchor definitions of wisdom in some form of evidence Second, it allows investigators to assess how people experience wisdom from the first-person perspective However, assessing lay conceptions of wisdom is not the same as studying “wisdom” This approach is analogous to seeking to define “weather”, “life” or “memory” by asking everyday people about their conceptions of these terms (Bluck and Glück, 2011) As a result, one could never be sure that what people say about wisdom maps onto whatever it is that we call wisdom Judgments about wisdom cannot be treated as indicators of what wisdom is, or even if wisdom is anything at all If philosophical conceptions of wisdom are unreliable sources for defining wisdom, self-reports leave a gap between lay concepts and the referents to which those concepts are said to refer Self-Report Wisdom Scales A second method relies upon the concept of operationalization Such a view acknowledges that wisdom does not refer to a thing or process that be directly observed Instead of understanding wisdom as a psychological entity to be observed, this approach recognizes wisdom as a hypothetical construct – an abstract concept or “latent variable” used to explain a Development of Wise Decision Making range of observable events Viewed as such, the study of wisdom can proceed through the process of identifying observable indicators of wisdom A series of researchers have developed rating scales intended to measure wisdom in individual persons (Ardelt, 2003; Glück et al., 2013; Taylor, Bates & Webster, 2011; Thomas, Bangen, Ardelt & Jeste, 2017; Thomas et al, 2019; Webster, 2003) Having operationalized wisdom in terms of these instruments, researchers establish validity by assessing correlations among these instruments measures of variables that might commonly be expected to be related to wisdom Table identifies seven different self-report scales that are intended to assess wisdom within individual persons Each of the indices indicated assess what theorists have called personal wisdom; that is, the capacity for first-person judgments about personal and interpersonal concerns that are informed by life experience, rather than judgments about global human concerns as viewed from the perspective of a third-person observer (Staudinger & Glück, 2011) Sample questions for each scale are indicated in Table The questions generally require participants to rate the extent to which they or other people exhibit qualities that are seen to be definitive of wise persons The questions that make up these various indices are derived from self-report studies using methods similar to those employed to assess lay conceptions of wisdom (e.g., descriptions of people nominated as wise; personal definitions of wisdom; etc.) Using conventional methods, with exceptions, researchers using these scales have reported acceptable levels of reliability (Webster, 2017, 2019) Table Self-Report Wisdom Scales Scale Dimensions Adult Self-Transcendence (e.g., “I find more Transcendence joy in my life”); Alienation (e.g., “My sense of self has Scale1 (ASTI) decreased”) The Wise Thinking and Acting Questionnaire2 (WITHAQ) Practical (e.g., “I have built wellformulated views and attitudes as far as important moral matters of modern life are concerned”) Dialectical Thinking (e.g.,” I am usually open to and interested in different viewpoints, because this way I can Sample Relations to Other Psychological Assessments Wisdom: SAWS, 3D-WS; Age (Yes), Neuroticism, Openness to Experience, Extraversion, Agreeableness (Levenson et al., 2005); Life Satisfaction (Le, 2011); Adaptive Identity Style (Beaumont, 2009); Self-Efficacy, (.34), Openness (.44), Personal Growth (.22), Emotional Competence, (.50) Empathy, (.28) (Glück et al., 2013) Wisdom: Modest relations to ASTI, 3D-WS, WRS, Moderate relation to SAWS; self-efficacy (Digangi et al., 2013) Development of Wise Decision Making Situated Wise Reasoning Scale3 (SWRS) Fundamental Values Scale4 (FVS) Wisdom Development Scale5 (WDS) form a more complete and clear opinion about an issue”) Awareness of Uncertainty (e.g., “When I plan tomorrow’s schedule, I usually think about the possibility that something happens and as a result my plans would be reversed”) Perspective Taking (e.g., “Put myself in the other person’s shoes”) Consideration of Change (e.g., “Looked for different solutions as the situation evolved”) Intellectual Humility (e.g., “Doublechecked whether my opinion on the situation might be incorrect”) Search for Compromise (e.g., “Tried to anticipate how the conflict might be resolved”) Outsider Perspective (e.g., “Tried to see the conflict from the point of view of an uninvolved person”) Harmony (e.g., “Good Judgment”); Warmth (e.g., “Humor”); Nature (e.g., “Reverence for Nature”); Intelligence (e.g., “Problem-Solving Ability); Spirituality (e.g., “Living a Spiritual Life”) Self-Knowledge (e.g., “I am well aware of my values.”) Emotional Management (e.g., “I get upset easily”) Altruism (e.g., “I show appreciation toward others,” Leadership (e.g., “I inspire others”) Judgment (e.g., “I take the context of the situation into consideration when making decisions”) Life Knowledge (e.g., “I look for deeper meaning of events in life”) Life Skills: I handle multiple obligations effectively Willingness to Learn (e.g., “I seek assistance when necessary”) 10 Wisdom: SAWS (.39), 3D-WS (.21), ASTI (.19); Adaptive Emotion Regulation, Mindfulness, Balancing Self-Interest and Cooperation; Attributional Complexity about Conflict; Openness, Extraversion, Perspective Taking; Emotional Intelligence, (Brienza, Kung, Santos, Bobocel & Grossmann, 2018); Diversity of Emotional Experience (Grossmann, Oakes & Santos, 2019) Spirituality, Stress (Jason et al., 2001); Depression, Stress, Optimism (Jason et al., 2004) Epistemological development (Ghina, Hasan & Fayyaz, 2017); leadership styles (ParcoTropicales & de Guzman, 2014) Development of Wise Decision Making 33 The narrator of this protocol judged her decision to be a wise one (81/100) As such, this protocol illustrates several important points First, it provides an example of how individuals who are capable of high levels of representational complexity can and make decisions that are likely to be regarded as unwise by conventional standards Second, it illustrates that laypersons use a variety of criteria – often inconsistent and conflicting – to make judgments about the wisdom of their actions Still further, it illustrates that people can judge acts as wise that are founded on contestable moral foundations A final example illustrates the complexities involved in evaluating a decision as wise – either from a first- or third-person perspective Consider the following protocol from a young woman who was rejected by her boyfriend The problem was that Derek didn't want to be with me anymore The decision was to let him go I asked him a few times if he still wanted to be with me, and he always just kind of avoided talking about it I told him to write an email explaining his feelings and he did and then he said he did still want to be, but clearly he didn't Eventually I confronted him about it and he said he actually didn't want to be with me I wanted him to be honest He was having so much trouble communicating his feelings and I wanted him to encourage him to that I don't know I still feel conflicted It was good in that I think he did what he needed to And I in a lot of ways feel like it was the right choice I wasn't ready I had too many doubts But it also destroyed my life so there's that In this protocol, the narrator indicates her “decision was to let him [her boyfriend] go” This decision may be regarded as a “wise” decision for many reasons First, because the narrator herself does not have control over her boyfriend’s actions, the decision to “let him go” is a decision to accept her boyfriend’s choice Second, an attempt to prevent the breakup could reasonably be expected to cause pain for both the narrator and her boyfriend Finally, the narrator’s decision, although painful in the short-term, is likely to bear good in the long-term The narrator herself rated her decision as relatively wise (68/100) Nonetheless, her rationale lacks qualities that would be expected of a wise decision Although she indicates that “I in a lot of ways feel like it was the right choice”, she neither identifies what is good her choice, now how it would affect her life in the future Similarly, she does she consider the difficulties that could ensue had she not made that choice The mere use of self-report rating to assess the wisdom making tends to obscure variation both within and between people in the meanings that mediate those judgments (Rosenbaum & Valsiner, 2011; Schwartz, 1999, see also Ferrando & Lorenzo-Seva, 2007) Ratings are types of human judgment The use of rating scales to assess human experience is only as good as our understanding the processes by which persons make those judgments To the extent that people use terms like “wise” in different ways, as researchers, it is important that we understand the particular meanings that mediate lay judgments In contrast to the multiplicity of meanings that mediate lay judgments, the theoretical concept of wisdom invoked here is an Development of Wise Decision Making 34 integrative one It defines wisdom in terms of the integration of reasoning, a sense of futurity, adaptive problem-solving, and a sense of goodness that extends beyond the self CONCLUSIONS: INTERSUBJECTIVTY, INTERDISCIPINARITY AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF WISDOM The analysis of the development of wisdom is important not simply for academic purposes, but for the purposes understanding how to manage our physical, social and technologicallymediated worlds Drawing on the above, one might suggest that a developmental analysis of wisdom can be informed by a series of central organizing principles Knowledge of how to live in the world cannot come from science – at least not science as traditionally understood Traditional empirical science is conceived as a method for identifying what is independent of what ought to be If this is so, while scientific knowledge can inform our sense of what ought to be, it cannot determine how we ought to live Instead, in a technological world that is increasingly fragmented by the dismantling of shared beliefs about how we ought to live our lives, the need to cultivate wisdom among individuals and collectives is increasingly important The concepts and evaluative standards that define acts as “wise” develop discursively as people how to live well in the context of their existing resources and social conditions It is not possible to find out what wisdom through unbiased observation – no matter how precise one’s observations may be Bluck and Glück (2013) have stated that, “Psychologists who ask ‘How wise is this person compared to that one?’ must be able to defend that they have a reliable as well as internally and, most open to criticism, an externally valid way of defining and measuring levels of wisdom” (p 84, emphasis added) However, to the extent that wise action is defined with reference to human evaluative judgments, there can be no external standard outside of our experience that can identify an act as wise This is not to say that there are no standards at all for judging wisdom; it is merely to say that those standards exist not in an empirical world that can be observed, but instead in the intersubjective lifeworld of human relational experience The psychological study of wisdom would benefit from an explicitly intersubjective rather than objectivist epistemology An intersubjective epistemology is one that embraces that idea that psychological knowledge has its origins in the human capacity to share, coordinate, mutually incorporate experience Intersubjectively shared knowledge is the foundation of psychological and other forms of inquiry – and not merely its product If this is so, it follows that psychological science already operates as an intersubjective process: psychological categories have their origins in symbolically shared experience before they are used as guides to empirical research Given the values that identify psychology as an empirical science, the intersubjective mediation of psychological research remains largely hidden Our reluctance to acknowledge the intersubjective core of psychological theory and research reflects a failure of reflexivity Development of Wise Decision Making 35 Without a reflective awareness of the relational origins of our psychological categories, we fail to see the ways in our value presuppositions shape what we take to be instances of reality Acknowledging this point accentuates the need to build interdisciplinary bridges between the sciences and the humanities – collaborative exchanges that are necessary if we are to make systematic inquiries about evaluative human categories Studying the development of wisdom is not the same as studying wisdom across the lifespan The question of how the capacity for wisdom changes across the lifespan is an interesting and worthy one It is important to understand how cognitive and affective capacities, life experiences, shifting roles and local life-circumstances conspire to produce novel forms of wise decision-making However, analyzing age-related changes in wisdom is not the same as studying the development of wisdom As used here, development is a directional concept; it refers to the ways in which a capacity – psychological or otherwise – forms over time as it moves toward some conception of its optimal or idealized state To study the development of wisdom requires that we have some conception of what we mean by wisdom and wise-decision making skills are developing towards The analysis of development becomes the study of how the skills and practices of wise decision-making become increasingly differentiated, integrated and hierarchically integrated as the move in the direction of our idealized conceptions of what it means to be wise Developmental changes in wise-decision making would thus be defined in terms of progressive movement toward such developmental endpoints Thus, while age-related changes can move in any direction, developmental changes are progressive changes It is only in relation to such endpoints that it makes sense to speak of progression, backward transitions, regression or lateral movement A genuinely developmental analysis of wisdom requires the study of structural changes in contextualized deliberation and action As defined here, the capacity for wise deliberation is an integrated system of skills Any given instance of wise deliberation and action has structure: building on experience, knowledge, and an appreciation for the good, it requires the coordination of the capacity to engage in reflective thought, problem-solving, to anticipate the positive and negative outcomes of any given solution to a problem in both the short- and long-term, as well as the capacity to put such deliberations into action Understanding the development of wise-decision making thus requires tools for assessing and tracking changes in the structure of wise deliberation and action over time With exceptions, many approaches to assessing wisdom across the lifespan fail to examine changes in the structure of wise action Selfreport questionnaires, for example, are based on respondent assessments of the extent to which they or other people engage in certain target behaviors that are seen to be characteristic of “wise” individuals Such responses are unable to provide assessments of the developing structure of action The aggregation of self-reported frequency data across large numbers of persons run the risk of obscuring rather than illuminating the process by which the capacity for wise decision-making develops To assess the developing structure of wise action, it is necessary to study changes in the ways in which Development of Wise Decision Making individual persons make decisions in particular in particular contexts and socio-moral domains If the world needs more wisdom, we will not be able to find it simply through empirical observation Traditional science is understood as the study of what is; 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Informed by a clear awareness of your values? 10 Informed by conflicting values? 11 Hurtful or damaging to others? 12 Informed by your sense of purpose in life? 13 Informed or influence by religion? 14 Informed or influenced by a personal philosophy? 15 The morally right thing to do? 16 Made by seeking out the opinions of others? 17 Made with compassion for others in mind? 18 Something that brought you peace of mind? 19 Informed by the need to consider the perspectives of different others? 20 Certainty When you were first confronted with this problem, how sure or unsure where you about what the correct solution should be? Development of Wise Decision Making 46 Appendix B: Assessing Structural Transformations in Deliberative Action Using Dynamic Skill Theory Fischer’s (1980) dynamic skill theory provides a developmental yardstick for identifying the structure of any particular act of decision-making (see Mascolo, 2020; Mascolo & Fischer, 2015) Fischer’s skill theory describes a series of 13 levels of complexity in the development of any given skilled action When assessing adult development, skills typically operate at the higher representational and abstract tiers of development Using representations, people are capable of able to represent and manipulate the concrete and tangible aspects of things, events, people and social relations Within the abstract tier, people construct abstract concepts reflecting the intangible and hypothetical ideas that are largely free from specific content Fischer’s skill theory describes a series of 13 levels organized into four broad tiers of development These tiers include reflexes (i.e, innate action components), sensorimotor actions (i.e., acquired and controlled action components) representations (i.e., concrete symbolic images and meanings) and abstractions (i.e., abstract concepts) Each broad tier is composed of four iterative levels (i.e., single sets, mappings, systems, and systems of systems), the last level of which is the equivalent of the first level of the next broad tier of development Different skill levels emerge at different age ranges Skills within the reflex and sensorimotor levels emerge in infancy; skills within the representational tier emerge in early childhood and continue to develop thereafter As skills enter the abstract tier, they move through a series of iterative levels and steps The level of single abstractions begins to emerge at 10-11 years of age, and consist of the capacity to one single abstract idea Abstract mappings begin to develop around age 13-14, and consist of the capacity to relate two or more abstract representations at the same time Abstract systems begin to emerge at 17-18 years of age, and consist of the capacity to coordination two or more abstract mappings into a single seamless structure Finally, abstract principles – systems of abstract systems, begin to emerge around age 21-23 in people who have acquired high levels of expertise in particular conceptual domains In skill theory, it is important to understand that what develops over time are structures of skills – not people It is not helpful to say that a person functions at a given stage or level of development at any given point in time Any given person is able to construct multiple different type of skills in different conceptual domains The level of skill evinced by a person varies as a product of the skill domain, the social context, the purpose in executing the skill, emotional state of the person, time of day, and so forth The ages of emergence for any given skill consist of the earliest ages at which a skill can develop in contexts that support their emergence and functioning When people begin to learn skills in new areas, their level of skill is typically many steps lower than the highest level of skill that they are able to produce in areas in which they have expertise It is not unusual to find when embarking on a new area of learning, adults capable of thinking using higher order abstractions may begin learning at significantly lower tiers and levels, including both representational and even the sensorimotor tiers Development of Wise Decision Making 47 i According to Husserl (1970), the natural sciences “give the impression that [they] are based on the experience of objective nature” However, objective nature is not something that can be directly experienced; experience occurs within the phenomenal sphere of the lifeworld the only world that is available to scientists and laypersons alike As such, an “objective observation” does not result from recording nature as it truly is Instead, it is a matter of building and refining, over time, shared categories that reflect regularities in our experienced world – however our experience is mediated by cultural or scientific tools Objectivity is thus the task of constructing – within an already existing lifeworld meanings and categories for everyone, rather than meanings for just you or just me (subjectivity) It is a thus a scientific accomplishment that occurs not by gaining access to an independently existing world, but within and through intersubjectivity of the lifeworld None of this is to say that meanings are mere social constructions – arbitrary creations of society and language-mediated social interaction While we may not be able to experience the physical world as it truly is, the physical world nonetheless exists While there are many ways to create meaning, the experienced world nonetheless pushes back; it is recalcitrant Thus, while we may be free to construct and reconstruct our representational worlds, we are not free to reconstruct them in any way we please ii A primordial capacity for intersubjectivity exists at birth For example, infants are able to imitate facial expressions of other people – expressions that they cannot see themselves making (Meltzoff & Moore, 1981) This suggests the existence of a cross-modal capacity to map the actions of others onto the same actions in the self Research on mirror neurons (Kilner & Lemon, 2017) suggests a mechanism for mediating such an effect Originally Identified in macaques, mirror neurons are those that fire not only when a monkey observes a goal-directed action in a conspecific, but also when the monkey himself performs those same actions iii A wise decision is not simply a decision that is judged to be good from the first-person perspective of a single actor or research participant There are many reasons why this is so First, an outcome that may be considered good from one person’s perspective may not be considered from the perspective of others involved in or affected by a decision For example, a decision to pursue an education at a prestigious college may be seen as good from the perspective of the student, but less good from the perspective of the parent to is charged to pay the bill Second, a person may decide upon a course of action that meets a given set of goals or concerns, but those concerns may not be good ones For example, a belief that it is wise to get a good grade by cheating does not make the decision to so a wise one ... as they occur over the course of their development We embrace a strong form of the concept of development: To the extent that forms of thinking, feeling and acting development, they become increasingly... large numbers of persons run the risk of obscuring rather than illuminating the process by which the capacity for wise decision-making develops To assess the developing structure of wise action, it... with the central problems and avoid the dangers in the predicament(s) human beings find themselves in (Nozick, 1989, p 269) Why study the development of wisdom? Of what value is studying the development