Citation

Maercker A, Böhmig-Krumhaar SA, Staudinger UM. Z. Entwicklungspsychol. Padagog. Psychol. 1998; 30(1): 2-12.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1998, Verlag fur Psychologie, Publisher Hogrefe Publishing)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

A task involving an existential confrontation was introduced to assess wisdom-related performance. Answers to a think-aloud task (suicide task) were rated according to the Berlin wisdom model (cf. Baltes & Smith, 1990; Staudinger & Baltes, 1996a) on five criteria, i.e., rich factual and procedural knowledge, life-span contextualism, value relativism, and uncertainty. The study focused on a group of individuals nominated as being wise (n = 16) by journalists (n = 21). The comparison groups included older clinical psychologists and old and young adult groups. The existential-confrontation task activated insight and judgment about fundamental life matters that could be reliably rated and showed some external validity. As expected wisdom nominees outperformed the other comparison groups, specifically on the two metacriteria life-span contextualism and value relativism.

Language: de

Keywords

Existential confrontation; Lifespan psychology; Nomination procedure; Wisdom