Wisdom & Well-being Can Increase into Old Age

     "Psychologists have long sought to identify strategies that are reliably associated with greater well-being. The observation that wise reasoning improves into old age in conjunction with experimental work on the malleability of wise reasoning suggests that it may be possible to train people to reason wisely. Our findings further suggest that wise reasoning is a potential psychological mechanism that may explain age-related differences in well-being. This finding dovetails with work ... demonstrating that as people age, they shift their priorities toward interpersonal issues and develop greater emotional competence. Extending this work, the present research demonstrated that older adults show greater ability to reason wisely about social conflicts than younger adults and that among middle-aged and older adults, such reasoning is positively linked to socioemotional benefits."

         Grossmann I, Na J, Varnum MEW, Kitayama S, Nisbett RE. A Route to Well-Being: Intelligence Versus Wise Reasoning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. Advance 2012 online publication. doi: 10.1037/a0029560

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