Despite the loss of their own fertility and physical health, older adults help enhance their children’s and grandchildren’s well-being, health, longevity, and fertility – the “Grandmother Hypothesis” of wisdom. Wisdom tends to increase with active aging, facilitating a contribution of wise grandparents to promoting fitness of younger kin.
Wisdom is associated with positive life outcomes including better health, well-being, happiness, life satisfaction, and resilience. These psychological processes involve the fronto-limbic circuitry. While there are different conceptualizations of wisdom, it is best defined as a complex human characteristic or trait with specific components: social decision making, emotional regulation, prosocial behaviour (such as empathy and compassion), self-reflection, acceptance of uncertainty, decisiveness, and spirituality. The focus is on practical rather than theoretical wisdom. This essay provides an understanding of wisdom as a scientific construct, based on empirical research starting in the 1970s. It is often viewed as a fuzzy psychological construct analogous to consciousness, stress, and resilience. Wisdom has been discussed for centuries in religious and philosophical texts.
0 kommentar(er)
