Real-time measurement of wise personality cognition: Evidence from mouse tracking

Abstract

There is no uniform definition of wisdom. In a psychological context, wisdom can be described as a comprehensive psychological trait integrating virtue and intelligence. Although the outcomes of wise personality characteristics have been studied, the temporal dynamics of real-time processing of wise personality remain elusive. In the current study, mouse tracking techniques were used to explore the cognitive dynamics of real-time processing of wise personality in two experiments. Study 1 showed that when participants were required to categorize wise and unwise characteristics in compatible and incompatible trials, the mouse trajectories showed a continuous spatial attraction toward the compatibility between wisdom and the wise characteristics. Further, in two dimensions of the wise personality, wisdom and the competence dimension were more closely linked. In Study 2, the mouse trajectories revealed that the connections among the different types of wisdom and between the two dimensions of wise personality were distinguished through the priming social categories. Natural wisdom showed a stronger connection with the competence dimension, whereas human wisdom showed a stronger tendency to be associated with the virtue dimension. The current study demonstrated that wisdom is the integration of virtue and competence and that competence can be regarded as the primary feature of wise individuals.