The Wisdom in Virtue: Pursuit of Virtue Predicts Wise Reasoning About Personal Conflicts

Abstract

Most people can reason relatively wisely about others’ social conflicts, but often struggle to do so about their own (i.e., Solomon’s paradox). We suggest that true wisdom should involve the ability to reason wisely about both others’ and one’s own social conflicts, and we investigated the pursuit of virtue as a construct that predicts this broader capacity for wisdom. Results across two studies support prior findings regarding Solomon’s paradox: Participants (N = 623) more strongly endorsed wise-reasoning strategies (e.g., intellectual humility, adopting an outsider’s perspective) for resolving other people’s social conflicts than for resolving their own. The pursuit of virtue (e.g., pursuing personal ideals and contributing to other people) moderated this effect of conflict type. In both studies, greater endorsement of the pursuit of virtue was associated with greater endorsement of wise-reasoning strategies for one’s own personal conflicts; as a result, participants who highly endorsed the pursuit of virtue endorsed wise-reasoning strategies at similar levels for resolving their own social conflicts and resolving other people’s social conflicts. Implications of these results and underlying mechanisms are explored and discussed.

Keywords

wisdom virtue motivation interpersonal conflicts well-being open data preregistered

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Aquinas

(2012). Summa theologica. Milton Keynes, England: Authentic Media.

Baltes

P. B.

Smith

(2008). The fascination of wisdom: Its nature, ontogeny, and function. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 3, 56–64. doi:10.1111/j.1745-6916.2008.00062.x

Baltes

P. B.

Staudinger

U. M.

(2000). Wisdom: A metaheuristic (pragmatic) to orchestrate mind and virtue toward excellence. American Psychologist, 55, 122–136.

Bauer

J. J.

McAdams

D. P.

Pals

J. L.

(2008). Narrative identity and eudaimonic well-being. Journal of Happiness Studies, 9, 81–104.

Brienza

Kung

F. Y. H.

Santos

H. C.

Bobocel

D. R.

Grossmann

(2017). Wisdom, bias, and balance: Toward a process-sensitive measurement of wisdom-related cognition. Retrieved from osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/p25c2

Dambrun

Ricard

(2011). Self-centeredness and selflessness: A theory of self-based psychological functioning and its consequences for happiness. Review of General Psychology, 15, 138–157.

Delany

(1911). Prudence. In The Catholic encyclopedia. Retrieved from http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12517b.htm

Grossmann

(2017). Wisdom in context. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 12, 233–257.

Grossmann

Kross

(2010). The impact of culture on adaptive versus maladaptive self-reflection. Psychological Science, 21, 1150–1157.

10.

Grossmann

Kross

(2014). Exploring “Solomon’s paradox”: Self-distancing eliminates the self-other asymmetry in wise reasoning about close relations in younger and older adults. Psychological Science, 25, 1571–1580.

11.

Grossmann

Varnum

M. E. W.

Kitayama

Nisbett

R. E.

(2013). A route to well-being: Intelligence vs. wise reasoning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 142, 944–953.

12.

Grossmann

Varnum

M. E. W.

Park

D. C.

Kitayama

Nisbett

R. E.

(2010). Reasoning about social conflicts improves into old age. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, 107, 7246–7250.

13.

Huta

Ryan

R. M.

(2010). Pursuing pleasure or virtue: The differential and overlapping well-being benefits of hedonic and eudaimonic motives. Journal of Happiness Studies, 11, 735–762.

14.

Huta

Waterman

A. S.

(2014). Eudaimonia and its distinction from hedonia: Developing a classification and terminology for understanding conceptual and operational definitions. Journal of Happiness Studies, 15, 1425–1456.

15.

Kraut

(2016). Aristotle’s ethics. In Zalta

E. N.

(Ed.), The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy. Retrieved from http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2016/entries/aristotle-ethics/

16.

Kross

Grossmann

(2012). Boosting wisdom: Distance from the self enhances wise reasoning, attitudes, and behavior. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 141, 43–48.

17.

Kunzmann

Baltes

P. B.

(2003). Wisdom-related knowledge: Affective, motivational, and interpersonal correlates. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 29, 1104–1119.

18.

T. N.

(2011). Life satisfaction, openness value, self-transcendence, and wisdom. Journal of Happiness Studies, 12, 171–182.

19.

Levenson

M. R.

Jennings

P. A.

Aldwin

C. M.

Shiraishi

R. W.

(2005). Self-transcendence: Conceptualization and measurement. The International Journal of Aging & Human Development, 60, 127–143.

20.

McGregor

Zanna

M. P.

Holmes

J. G.

Spencer

S. J.

(2001). Compensatory conviction in the face of personal uncertainty: Going to extremes and being oneself. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80, 472–488.

21.

Mickler

Staudinger

U. M.

(2008). Personal wisdom: Validation and age-related differences of a performance measure. Psychology and Aging, 23, 787–799.

22.

Paolacci

Chandler

(2014). Inside the Turk: Understanding Mechanical Turk as a participant pool. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 23, 184–188.

23.

Pronin

Olivola

C. Y.

Kennedy

K. A.

(2008). Doing unto future selves as you would do unto others: Psychological distance and decision making. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34, 224–236.

24.

Rosenberg

(1965). Society and the adolescent self-image. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

25.

Ryan

R. M.

Huta

Deci

E. L.

(2013). Living well: A self-determination theory perspective on eudaimonia. In Delle Fave

(Ed.), The exploration of happiness: Present and future perspectives (pp. 117–139). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer.

26.

Staudinger

U. M.

Glück

(2011). Psychological wisdom research: Commonalities and differences in a growing field. Annual Review of Psychology, 62, 215–241.

27.

Watson

Clark

L. A.

Tellegen

(1988). Development and validation of brief measures of positive and negative affect: The PANAS scales. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54, 1063–1070.

Supplementary Material

Please find the following supplemental material available below.

For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.

For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.

0.00 MB

0.58 MB

0.43 MB