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20 - Wisdom

The Royal Road to Personality Growth

from Part II - Psychosocial Factors

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2019

By
Ute Kunzmann
Edited by
Rocío Fernández-Ballesteros ,
Athanase Benetos  and
Jean-Marie Robine
Rocío Fernández-Ballesteros
Affiliation:
Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
Athanase Benetos
Affiliation:
Université de Lorraine and Institut national de la santé et de la recherche médicale (INSERM) Nancy
Jean-Marie Robine
Affiliation:
INSERM
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Summary

Psychological approaches to successful aging would be incomplete if they failed to incorporate human strengths such as altruism, morality, or a personality growth orientation, even if these characteristics are likely to be incompatible with a constant experience of positive affect, because they require the ability to tolerate and make use of mixed and negative experiences This chapter that it is worth the effort to strive for wisdom, even if wisdom should be considered an ideal that most individuals cannot even come close to. The way towards wisdom is demanding and, thus, it does not come as a surprise that only very few individuals, if any, score high on performance-based measures of wisdom-related knowledge. There also is no evidence for the idea that wisdom automatically comes with age or that wiser individuals are better adjusted as, for example, manifested in higher life satisfaction, better jobs and careers, or a more fulfilling social life. And yet, wisdom-related knowledge is an essential element of the good life; it fosters generativity and the common good and can give guidance in times of crises because it is grounded in deep insight into human nature and the life course. Wisdom suggests constructive ways of making sense of existential issues that may be threatening to many, but that need to be addressed in order to fully exploit what it means to be human; thus, wisdom could be considered as a constituent element of successful life.
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Successful Aging , pp. 355 - 371
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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