Aging and Wisdom

People from different cultures vary in the ways they approach social conflicts, with Japanese being more motivated to maintain interpersonal harmony and avoid conflicts than Americans are. Such cultural differences have developmental consequences for reasoning about social conflict. In the study reported here, we interviewed random samples of Americans from the Midwest United States and Japanese from the larger Tokyo area about their reactions to stories of intergroup and interpersonal conflicts. Responses showed that wisdom (e.g., recognition of multiple perspectives, the limits of personal knowledge, and the importance of compromise) increased with increasing age among Americans, but older age was not associated with wiser responses among Japanese. Younger and middle-aged Japanese showed greater use of wise-reasoning strategies than younger and middle-aged Americans did. This cultural difference was weaker for older participants’ reactions to interpersonal conflicts and was actually reversed for intergroup conflicts. This research has important implications for the study of aging, cultural psychology, and wisdom.

[1]  Shinobu Kitayama,et al.  A route to well-being: intelligence versus wise reasoning. , 2013, Journal of experimental psychology. General.

[2]  Toshie Imada,et al.  Cultural Narratives of Individualism and Collectivism , 2012 .

[3]  Rhiannon N. Turner,et al.  Cognitive adaptation to the experience of social and cultural diversity. , 2011, Psychological bulletin.

[4]  Ayse K. Uskul,et al.  Culture, mind, and the brain: current evidence and future directions. , 2011, Annual review of psychology.

[5]  Denise C. Park,et al.  Reasoning about social conflicts improves into old age , 2010, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[6]  Sugimoto Yoshio,et al.  An introduction to Japanese society: 3rd ed , 2010 .

[7]  Y. Sugimoto.  An Introduction to Japanese Society: An Introduction to Japanese Society , 2010 .

[8]  Masaki Yuki,et al.  Similarity attraction and actually selecting similar others: How cross‐societal differences in relational mobility affect interpersonal similarity in Japan and the USA , 2009 .

[9]  D. Jeste,et al.  Neurobiology of wisdom: a literature overview. , 2009, Archives of general psychiatry.

[10]  John O. Willis,et al.  Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale–Third Edition , 2008 .

[11]  P. Baltes,et al.  The Fascination of Wisdom: Its Nature, Ontogeny, and Function , 2008, Perspectives on psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

[12]  R. Sternberg,et al.  A handbook of wisdom : psychological perspectives , 2005 .

[13]  T. Salthouse.  What and When of Cognitive Aging , 2004 .

[14]  R. Nisbett,et al.  Cultural variation in verbal versus spatial neuropsychological function across the life span. , 2002, Neuropsychology.

[15]  Shigehiro Oishi,et al.  Goals, Culture, and Subjective Well-Being , 2001 .

[16]  R. Nisbett,et al.  Culture and systems of thought: holistic versus analytic cognition. , 2001, Psychological review.

[17]  R. Nisbett,et al.  Running Head: CULTURE AND THOUGHT Culture and Systems of Thought: Holistic vs. Analytic Cognition , 2001 .

[18]  J. Weisz,et al.  The development of close relationships in Japan and the United States: paths of symbiotic harmony and generative tension. , 2000, Child development.

[19]  Richard P. Larrick,et al.  Conflict Management Style: Accounting for Cross-National Differences , 1998 .

[20]  杉本 良夫.  An introduction to Japanese society , 1997 .

[21]  Harry B. G. Ganzeboom,et al.  Internationally Comparable Measures of Occupational Status for the 1988 International Standard Classification of Occupations , 1996 .

[22]  Ken-ichi Ohbuchi,et al.  Cultural styles of conflict management in Japanese and Americans : Passivity, covertness, and effectiveness of strategies , 1994 .

[23]  K. Schaie.  The course of adult intellectual development. , 1994, The American psychologist.

[24]  L Hasher,et al.  Age and inhibition. , 1991, Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition.

[25]  H. Markus,et al.  Culture and the self: Implications for cognition, emotion, and motivation. , 1991 .

[26]  R. Sternberg.  Wisdom: Its Nature, Origins, And Development , 1990 .

[27]  M. Perlmutter,et al.  Wisdom: The study of wise persons: integrating a personality perspective , 1990 .

[28]  Deirdre A. Kramer,et al.  Wisdom: Conceptualizing wisdom: the primacy of affect–cognition relations , 1990 .

[29]  Paul B. Baltes,et al.  Gains and losses in development throughout adulthood as perceived by different adult age groups. , 1989 .

[30]  H. Triandis.  The Self and Social Behavior in Differing Cultural Contexts , 1989 .

[31]  Kwok Leung,et al.  Some Determinants of Conflict Avoidance , 1988 .

[32]  Michael Basseches,et al.  Dialectical Thinking and Adult Development , 1984 .

[33]  B. B. Lanham.  Ethics and Moral Precepts Taught in Schools of Japan and the United States , 1979 .