Wisdom and Well-Being Lecture Notes

Wisdom: Definitions and Associated Traits

• What defines wisdom?
• What traits are associated with it?
• Is it culture-specific?
• Can wisdom be cultivated?
• How does wisdom relate to happiness?

Your "Inner Hero"

• Eudaimonia: Complete and flourishing happiness from a life well-lived, including personal growth, self-development, and meaning.
• Flourishing: High well-being and low mental illness.
• How do our choices and behavior lead to flourishing?
• Golden mean → Eudaimonia → Happiness and positive emotions
• Who comes to mind when you think of the word "wisdom?"

Defining Wisdom: Various Perspectives

• Bangen, Meeks, and Jeste:
  • Knowledge of life
  • Prosocial values
  • Self-understanding
  • Emotional homeostasis
  • Tolerance
  • Openness
  • Sense of humor
• Kramer (2000):
  • "Exceptional breadth and depth of knowledge about the conditions of life and human affairs"
  • Wise people transform negative experiences into life-affirming experiences.
  • Think of a recent challenging experience you had in the past.
• Clayton (1982):
  • "The ability that enables the individual to grasp human nature (understanding the self and others)"
• Labouvie-Veif (1990):
  • Wisdom involves logos and mythos.
• Webster, J. (2003):
  • Openness
  • Emotional regulation
  • Coping
  • Reminiscence and reflectiveness
  • Self-effacing sense of humor
• Wisdom is NOT a result of age or intelligence
• Emergent Wisdom: Bassett

Interdependence and the Common Good

• Wisdom involves thinking that is centered on interdependence.
• Confluence model
• Promoting the common good.
• Wink and Henson:
  • Practical wisdom
    • Wisdom applied to life, shown through relationships with others.
    • Interpersonal skills
    • Clarity of thought
    • Tolerance for ambiguity
    • Generativity
  • Transcendental wisdom
    • Acknowledges the limits of life in general.
    • The complexity of life.
    • Calm acceptance of a greater perspective.
    • Understanding that life is complex and paradoxical.
    • Example, not definition: "The paradox of education is precisely this - that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated (James Baldwin)"
• Being okay when things don't make sense.
• Kunzmann and Strange:
  • Mature personality development
  • Post formal reasoning
    • Practical flexibility
    • Thoughts become more complex
    • Able to grasp paradoxes and contradictions
    • An expanded form of pragmatic or practical intelligence.
• Being realistic and sensible.
• Words of wisdom:
  • Lower expectations
  • Don't take yourself so seriously
  • Some people need an ear to listen to, not a mouth to speak
  • "Even when I have pains, I don't have to be one" - Maya Angelou
  • "You can't cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water"
• The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook - William James

Wisdom and Well-Being

• "There is a wisdom of the head, and a wisdom of the heart" (Charles Dickens)
• Heart rate variability → wiser judgment → lower stress
  • Linked to decisional ability
    • Ability to discern and have logical reasoning as well as our engagement
• Wisdom is correlated with increased striving for "the good life"
  • Life-satisfaction
  • Mastery
  • Purpose
  • Lowers anxiety
  • Physical well-being
  • Buffer against adversity
  • ACE buffer
  • Heart rate variability and vagal tone
  • Less stress
  • Less neurotic
  • Reasoning styles
  • Personal growth
  • Autonomy
  • Purpose
  • Openness
  • Agreeableness
  • Conscientiousness
  • Having concern for others

Wisdom as a Stage (Erikson)

• Wisdom is the virtue gained through the resolution of which stage of life?
  • Integrity vs Despair
    • Healthy way of reflecting and acceptance
    • Acknowledging the inevitability of death
  • Involved disinvolvement
    • Having that commitment to the process of life with a calm embrace of the inevitable (death)
    • Fearless attitude for whatever is next

Wisdom as Postformal Cognitive Development

• Solomon's Paradox
  • People are usually easily able to apply logical reasoning to other's conflicts; yet, fail to use these wise strategies as applied to their own conflicts
    • Easier said than done
    • Objectivity
    • 2017 study
      • Wise people are able to use these strategies for themself, also
      • Those who are actively engaged in pursuing their highest values
      • Engaging with others for the common greater good
      • They can see other perspectives in problems
      • Considering others involved
• Dunning Kruger Effect
  • The more we know, the more we realize we don't know
  • People who perceive themselves as experts can also reach nonsensical conclusions

Wisdom as a Form of Excellence

• Confluence of influences
• Baltes and Staudinger:
  • Wisdom as excellence may be so complicated that it may be beyond what psychological methods and concepts can achieve
  • Wisdom as excellence does NOT improve optimism
• Predictive of wisdom
  • Intelligence
    • Crystallized
    • Fluid
  • Personality
    • Openness
  • Cognitive style
    • Creative thinking
  • Life experiences
    • Overcome challenges

Cultivating Wisdom

• Cognition
  • Dialectical and reflective thinking
  • Immersion in great works of art and literature
  • Biographies of the "wise"
• Empathy and compassion
  • Wisdom is associated with emotion
  • Do for others
  • Practice human understanding
  • Generativity
• Be intentional
  • Make it a priority
  • Put it into action
• Emotional regulation
  • Heart rate variability
  • Vagal tone
  • Healthy coping to stress

Be Our Best Selves

• Psychodynamic perspectives
• Existential perspectives
• Humanistic perspectives

Psychodynamics: Early Theorists

• Adler:
  • Social interest
    • Connection with others
    • Immediate family relationships
    • Birth order important
      • Beginning in the early years
    • Theory of optimal well being: we learn from those around us and driven by social interests
• Jung:
  • “Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens”
  • The collective unconscious
    • Archetypes
      • Actual memories of our ancestors
  • Optimal Mental Health
    • Balance
    • Listening to the collective unconscious (dreams, memories)
    • Individuation
      • The individual develops from the collective unconscious from which they come from
• Fromm:
  • Human struggle with the reality of freedom
  • We desire closeness yet fear rejection
  • We desire independence yet struggle with it’s reality
  • Optimal well-being comes from acceptance of life’s dialectics
  • Unhealthy coping → anxiety → escape mechanisms
  • What triggers your escape mechanisms?
    • Know your triggers to have a productive orientation to avoid using escape mechanisms
    • Suggestions for optimal well-being:
      • Have a "just be" orientation
        • Be much instead of having much
      • How?
        • Strive for doing/being instead of having
        • Honesty, tolerance, patience, self-respect, humility, self-control and generosity
      • Willing one thing: live it intentionally
      • Be awake and aware
      • Concentrate
      • Meditate

Existentialist Perspectives

• Authenticity: the ability to recognize and take responsibility for one's own psychological experiences and to act in ways consistent with those experiences
  • Choice
  • Responsibility
  • Freedom
  • Anxiety
  • Guilt
  • Fate
    • Embracing our anxieties, don't deny it's existence
    • Meaningful goals that are congruent (aligned) with one's true self
      • Are you living a life that is true to who you are?
• Rollo May
  • We must deal with the dualities and paradoxes of life
  • Daimonic: any emotional response that has the power to take us over completely
  • Self-awareness
  • Honesty and courage
  • Living deeply
• Niemiec (2010): greater mindfulness resulted in less defensive reaction and less death anxiety
• Victor Frankl: "When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves"
  • Will to meaning
    • Taking action/act
    • Deeply experiencing
    • Suffering
  • Self-transcendence: discovering a higher-order meaning
  • Self-awareness
  • Honesty
  • Courage
  • Responsibility
    • And the anxiety that comes with it
  • Intentional
    • I'm just going to take what life throws at me and expect challenges/curve balls
  • Attitude
    • What matters most is our attitude towards the suffering
    • Attitude that fends of depression and anxiety
    • You can re-orient your self cognitively
• Paul Wong
  • Dual-system model of well-being
    • Positive and negative emotion
    • Creating our own meaning
      • Understanding ourself
      • Self-evaluation
      • Having goals
      • Having purpose
    • Tragic optimism: remaining optimistic in the face of unavoidable pain and hurt
    • Noetic happiness: acceptance, inner serenity, harmony, contentment and peace

Humanistic Perspectives

• Carl Rogers
  • Self-actualizing tendency
    • How can I be the best version of myself
    • The fully functioning person
      • Openness to experience
      • Existential living
        • Being authentic
      • Organismic experience
      • Freedom and creativity
      • Avoiding defense mechanisms
• Maslow's Theory of Self-Actualization
  • Full use of one's talents, capabilities and potential
  • Deficiency needs (D-Needs)
    • Physiological needs
    • Safety needs
  • Being needs (B-Needs)
    • Loving and belonging needs
    • Esteem needs
  • Security vs growth
    • Theres a tension (dilectics) and striving towards self actualization with having security and growing
    • "The greatest thing is, at any moment, to be willing to give up who we are in order to become all that we can be"
    • Openness to experience
    • Autonomy
    • Resistance to enculturation
    • Positive relationships
    • Strong ethical standards