Tem

Baltes & Smith, "Toward a Psychology of Wisdom and its Ontegenesis" 1990

• Motivations for the Berlin Paradigm's research: study of peak performance, positive aspects of aging, work on intelligence that reflects a concern with context and life pragmatics, Baltes & Smith p. 87

• Interesting discussion of problem of giving a scientific treatment of wisdom, p. 89.

• Fundamental assumption #1: Wisdom is an "expert knowledge system" (what is an expert system - mention Affectiva)
• Fundamental assumption:#2: A dual-process model of intelligence (Mechanics / Pragmatics) is most relevant to understanding wisdom.
• Fundamental assumption #3: Wisdom is about life pragmatics, understood as life planning, review

• The "Baltes Five" Criteria Construct for Wisdom:

• Rich factual knowledge: accumulation of knowledge which facilitates predictive ability to see how relationships, causes, and meanings will interact in a situation. "a representation of the expected sequential flow of events in a particular situation"
• Rich procedural knowledge: accumulation of knowledge which facilitates understanding of strategies of problem solving, advice seeking.
• Life span contextualism: understanding a problem in awareness of it's place in the life span.
• Relativism: Understanding and taking into account the range of values, goals, and priorities in human life.
• Uncertainty: awareness of limits of knowledge in general and in particular factual cases.

Small Group Exercise

• For each of the five, identify 3 examples, a word or phrase to describe someone not good at that aspect, a critical question or two.

Baltes & Freund, "Wisdom as Meta-Heuristic and SOC" 2002

• Sophia vs. Phronesis (one more time)

• Selection, Optimization, and Compensation is a collection of behavioral strategies for managing life pragmatics.

• Note definition of wisdom p. 251: strategies for peak or optimal functioning. but must be normative. Need to actually know something about what is really important in human flourishing to produce wisdom (this could be seen as a knowledge bias or a legitimate grounding of wisdom in knowledge). Baltes & Co. are siding with the traditions of philosophy and religion on this one. Wisdom is normative.

• Good review of Baltes (Berlin) Paradigm: note detail on "recognition and management of uncertainty" p. 253.

• Wisdom as Meta-heuristic. Definition p. 255. "a heuristic can be defined as a "useful shortcut, an approximation, or a rule of thumb for guiding search" "If wisdom as a meta-heuristic operates effectively, the expectation is that its use creates the cognitive and motivational foundation from which well-being can be achieved. In this sense, wisdom can be seen as the embodiment of the best subjective belief about laws of life that a culture has to offer and that individuals under favorable conditions are able to acquire."

Quick exercise: identify contemporary meta-heuristics in your experience

• SOC -- a heuristic for delineating, pursuing, and reviewing goals. (It's a heuristic for life management, so relevant to the Baltes paradigm)

• Selection -- of goals -- can be either elective selection or loss selection. Deliberate, articulate... approach vs. avoidance goals. loss also from zero sum aspect of goals as when an athlete becomes a scholar.
• Optimization -- of means. "Acquire and invest" - sub-skills like "monitoring between actual and desired state" - ability to delay gratification (Mischel)
• Compensation -- response to loss of means. Response to events.

• Proverbs as heuristics -- study found that SOC strategies were selected more often and faster than non-SOC strategies.

• Study showing SOC associated with "positive functioning" (NOTE: This relates to the "hard problem" of wisdom. Figuring out whether wisdom really "works".)

• Rubenstein quote at 265. Brim's "My Father's Window Box"

Kunzman and Baltes, "The Psychology of Wisdom: Theoretical and Practical Challenges"

• Challenges:

1. defining wisdom in a way that separates it from other human excellences.
2. formulating a definition of wisdom that can be empirically investigated.

• Distinction between implicit and explicit (112).

• Three types of wisdom constructs:

1. wisdom as aspect of personality development in later life (Erikson) - characterized by detachment from self-interest (note: not the only option)
2. post-formal thinking (gisela); "Dialectical thinking derives from the insight that knowledge about self & others, and the world evolves in an everlasting process of theses, antitheses, and syntheses. From this perspective, wisdom has been described as the integration of different modes of knowing" 115
3. form of intelligence and expertise (Baltes)

• Note: We'll add at least a fourth to this when we look at culture and wisdom later in the term.

• clearer explanation (than Baltes and Smith) of "cognitive mechanics" vs. "cognitive pragmatics" (116)

• "Big Picture" Review Model on p. 120. Note how it points to further topics that we will discuss in the semester. Note on 122: at young ages, we over identify high IQ individuals as wise. (Parallel to misperception of old as wise.)

• Discussion Topic: Must wisdom be oriented toward the individual and common good? sketch arguments together briefly.

• Empirical Results from "Think Aloud" research:

1. High scores rare.
2. Late adolescence and early adulthood is primary age window for onset of wisdom. Age doesn't predict score increases after that.
3. Development of wisdom beyond it's early onset depends upon "expertise-enhancing" factors, such as development of social/cognitive style, presence of role models, and motivational preferences such as an interest in understanding others. Personality not predicted as a factor (note contrast to happiness research).

Misc

(Some notes on Ontogenesis of wisdom from these three readings.)

• Note how you can explain the "age of onset" of wisdom as optimization of cognitive mechanics and pragmatics (suggests it can't be too old and that oldsters who maintain good mechanics (rare) might be outliers (high in wisdom)).

• from Kunzman and Baltes: "... the period of late adolescence and early adulthood is the primary age window for a first foundation of wisdom-related knowledge to emerge." p. 122 for details.

• from Baltes and Smith, p.110. research on old/young, normative/nonnormative, target age of problem. Suggests that older are not the optimal performance group when considering the different conditions the research looked at.

• from later reading -- Baltes & Freund, "... we know that the body of knowledge and cognitive skills associated with wisdom has its largest rate of change gradient in late adolescence and young adulthood (Pasupathi & Bakes,2000; Staudinger, 1999a). St). Subsequent age changes are a result of specific circumstances of life and nonintellectual attributes. For instance, the development of wisdom-related knowledge during adulthood is more conditioned by personality, cognitive style, and life experience than by psychometric intelligence (Staudinger, Maciel, Smith, & Bakes, 1998). "