Abstract
Wisdom is a field of growing interest both inside and outside academic psychology, and researchers are increasingly interested in using measures of wisdom in their work. However, wisdom is a highly complex construct, and its various operationalizations are based on quite different definitions. Which measure a researcher chooses for a particular research project may have a strong influence on the results. This study compares four well-established measures of wisdom—the Self-Assessed Wisdom Scale (Webster, 2003, 2007), the Three-Dimensional Wisdom Scale (Ardelt, 2003), the Adult Self-Transcendence Inventory (Levenson et al., 2005), and the Berlin Wisdom Paradigm (Baltes and Smith, 1990; Baltes and Staudinger, 2000)—with respect to content, reliability, factorial structure, and construct validity (relationships to wisdom nomination, interview-based wisdom ratings, and correlates of wisdom). The sample consisted of 47 wisdom nominees and 123 control participants. While none of the measures performed “better” than the others by absolute standards, recommendations are given for researchers to select the most suitable measure for their substantive interests. In addition, a “Brief Wisdom Screening Scale” is introduced that contains those 20 items from the three self-report scales that were most highly correlated with the common factor across the scales.
Highlights
Wisdom is a field of growing interest both inside and outside academic psychology, and researchers are increasingly interested in using measures of wisdom in their work
Performance-based measures assess wisdom from a person’s verbal responses to wisdom-requiring problems. They include the Berlin wisdom paradigm (BWP; overview in Baltes and Staudinger, 2000), which was used in the current study, and the Bremen wisdom paradigm (Mickler and Staudinger, 2008)
Validity of the measures were investigated in a sample of 47
Summary
Wisdom is a field of growing interest both inside and outside academic psychology. Over the last two decades, psychological wisdom research has grown steeply in terms of quantity (see Figure 1) as well as quality and sophistication of operationalizations and research designs (review in Staudinger and Glück, 2011; for recent innovations see, e.g., König and Glück, submitted; Kross and Grossmann, 2012; Grossmann et al, 2013; Thomas and Kunzmann, submitted). Performance-based measures assess wisdom from a person’s verbal responses to wisdom-requiring problems They include the Berlin wisdom paradigm (BWP; overview in Baltes and Staudinger, 2000), which was used in the current study, and the Bremen wisdom paradigm (Mickler and Staudinger, 2008). The self-report scales listed above and the Bremen wisdom paradigm (Mickler and Staudinger, 2008) measure personal wisdom, whereas the Berlin wisdom paradigm is the only wellestablished assessment of general wisdom (Staudinger and Glück, 2011) This “parallel control group” included women and men aged 26–84 years (M = 60.0, SD = 15.1), of whom 63.9% were married or living with a partner, 8.5% had a university degree, and. We introduce the new “Brief Wisdom Screening Scale.” Rather than to decide which measure is “best,” our main goal is to derive recommendations for researchers depending on their specific interests
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