Credits: Social Media
Getting older does not make you wiser, reveals psychologist
Despite a popularly held belief, getting older does not actually make you wiser, a scientist has revealed.�
With age comes wisdom, is a phrase most have heard. It was first coined by British author Oscar Wilde but is often used by older people to put down younger generations. But, send this to your grandparents because that previously believed fact is scientifically false.
Science doesnt lie
Doctor Judith Gl�ck, a psychologist at the University of Klagenfurt in Austria, has conducted a review of previous studies linking the idea of wisdom with age. She ultimately found that the statistical relationships between wisdom and chronological age are not strong. Someone buy this Doctor a drink.
Publishing her findings in the Current Opinion in Psychology journal, Doctor Gl�ck explained that people can get wiser the older they become. After all, people typically have more lived experiences and accumulate more knowledge throughout their lives. But, this is not always the case and lived experiences do not necessarily equate to wisdom.
Neither growing old nor accumulating life experiences is sufficient for growing wise, she explained.
The harsh reality is that becoming wise requires more than just growing old and it doesnt just automatically happen. Instead, it is the accumulation of ones life that results in wisdom.
Whether and how much individuals grow towards wisdom depends on individual constellations of life experiences and intrapersonal and interpersonal resources, she said. Accumulated life experience is an important foundation for wisdom, but not all highly wise individuals are old and many old individuals are not particularly wise.
What makes someone wise?
According to the paper, there are a number of innate characteristics that make an individual wise. Shockingly, having a long white beard is not among them. One such quality is compassion, which we can all agree the world needs more of.
Compassion is described as the sympathetic pity and concern for the sufferings or misfortunes of others.
Doctor Gl�ck also stated that another trait is self-transcendence , which is the evaporation of personal boundaries.
There is also a reasonable amount of information to suggest that wisdom could decline with age because of a decline in empathy and the ability to properly regulate emotions.
