Charles Dickens said: “There is a wisdom of the head, and a wisdom of the heart”. It turns out he was spot on. And this is fairly universal across the world.
Research released this week by the University of Waterloo found that wisdom is perceived based on a person’s “reflective orientation” and “socio-emotional awareness”.
Reflective orientation referred to the ability to think logically, control emotions and apply knowledge.
Socio-emotional awareness referred to caring for other’s feelings and giving attention to social context.
The research involved participants across 12 countries on five continents.
“To our surprise, the two dimensions emerged across all cultural regions we studied, and both were associated with explicit attribution of wisdom,” Maksim Rudnev, a postdoctoral research associate in psychology at Waterloo and lead author, said.
“Understanding perceptions of wisdom around the world has implications for leadership, education and cross-cultural communication. It is the first step in understanding universal principles in how others perceive wisdom people in different contexts.”
While both aspects of wisdom were important, the study also showed that people who “give indiscriminately or people who are mindlessly driven by emotions” were less likely to be considered wise.
“These individuals might be admired and revered in some instances, but unlikely to be perceived as wise,” the study report said.
“Reflective Orientation thus seems to be a necessary condition for obtaining higher wisdom, whereas Socio-Emotional Awareness positively contributes to wisdom only when the first condition is satisfied.
The study, Dimensions of Wisdom Perception Across Twelve Countries on Five Continents, is published in Nature Communications. It involved 2707 participants from 16 socio-economically and culturally diverse groups.
The full report can be found on the Nature website.
