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Across cultures, wisdom has been considered one of the most revered human qualities. Although the truly wise may seem few and far between, empirical research examining wisdom suggests that it isn’t an exceptional trait possessed by a small handful of bearded philosophers after all – in fact, the latest studies suggest that most of us have the ability to make wise decisions, given the right context.

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‘It appears that experiential, situational, and cultural factors are even more powerful in shaping wisdom than previously imagined,’ says Associate Professor Igor Grossmann of the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. ‘Recent empirical findings from cognitive, developmental, social, and personality psychology cumulatively suggest that people’s ability to reason wisely varies dramatically across experiential and situational contexts. Understanding the role of such contextual factors offers unique insights into understanding wisdom in daily life, as well as how it can be enhanced and taught.’

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It seems that it’s not so much that some people simply possess wisdom and others lack it, but that our ability to reason wisely depends on a variety of external factors. ‘It is impossible to characterize thought processes attributed to wisdom without considering the role of contextual factors,’ explains Grossmann. ‘In other words, wisdom is not solely an “inner quality” but rather unfolds as a function of situations people happen to be in. Some situations are more likely to promote wisdom than others.’

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Coming up with a definition of wisdom is challenging, but Grossmann and his colleagues have identified four key characteristics as part of a framework of wise reasoning. One is intellectual humility or recognition of the limits of our own knowledge, and another is appreciation of perspectives wider than the issue at hand. Sensitivity to the possibility of change in social relations is also key, along with compromise or integration of different attitudes and beliefs.

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Grossmann and his colleagues have also found that one of the most reliable ways to support wisdom in our own day-to-day decisions is to look at scenarios from a third-party perspective, as though giving advice to a friend. Research suggests that when adopting a first-person viewpoint we focus on ‘the focal features of the environment’ and when we adopt a third-person, ‘observer’ viewpoint we reason more broadly and focus more on interpersonal and moral ideals such as justice and impartiality. Looking at problems from this more expansive viewpoint appears to foster cognitive processes related to wise decisions.

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What are we to do, then, when confronted with situations like a disagreement with a spouse or negotiating a contract at work, that require us to take a personal stake? Grossmann argues that even when we aren’t able to change the situation, we can still evaluate these experiences from different perspectives.

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For example, in one experiment that took place during the peak of a recent economic recession, graduating college seniors were asked to reflect on their job prospects. The students were instructed to imagine their career either ‘as if you were a distant observer’ or ‘before your own eyes as if you were right there’. Participants in the group assigned to the distant observer’ role displayed more wisdom-related reasoning (intellectual humility and recognition of change) than did participants in the control group.

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In another study, couples in long-term romantic relationships were instructed to visualize an unresolved relationship conflict either through the eyes of an outsider or from their own perspective. Participants then discussed the incident with their partner for 10 minutes, after which they wrote down their thoughts about it. Couples in the ‘other’s eyes’ condition were significantly more likely to rely on wise reasoning – recognizing others’ perspectives and searching for a compromise -compared to the couples in the egocentric condition.

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‘Ego-decentering promotes greater focus on others and enables a bigger picture, conceptual view of the experience, affording recognition of intellectual humility and change,’ says Grossmann.

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We might associate wisdom with intelligence or particular personality traits, but research shows only a small positive relationship between wise thinking and crystallized intelligence and the personality traits of openness and agreeableness. ‘It is remarkable how much people can vary in their wisdom from one situation to the next, and how much stronger such contextual effects are for understanding the relationship between wise judgment and its social and affective outcomes as compared to the generalized “traits”‘, Grossmann explains. ‘That is, knowing how wisely a person behaves in a given situation is more informative for understanding their emotions or likelihood to forgive [or] retaliate as compared to knowing whether the person may be wise “in general”‘.

不同文化中，智慧一直被认为是最受尊敬的人类品质之一。尽管真正明智的人似乎寥寥无几，但对智慧进行研究的经验研究表明，它并不是一种仅被少数有胡子的哲学家所拥有的特殊品质 - 实际上，最新的研究表明，大多数人在适当的情境下都有做出明智决策的能力。

加拿大安大略省滑铁卢大学的副教授伊戈尔·格罗斯曼表示：“经验、情境和文化因素对智慧的塑造比之前想象的更加强大。”他说：“来自认知、发展、社会和人格心理学的最新实证发现累积表明，人们在经验和情境背景下的理性智慧能力存在显著差异。了解这些情境因素的作用，可以为我们更好地理解日常生活中的智慧以及如何增强和教授智慧提供独特的见解。”

看起来，并不是某些人简单地拥有智慧，而是我们的理性智慧能力取决于多种外部因素。格罗斯曼解释道：“在考虑到情境因素的作用之前，不可能对归因于智慧的思维过程进行描述。换句话说，智慧不仅仅是一种‘内在品质’，而是作为人们所处情境的一种功能展现。某些情境更有可能促进智慧的发展。”

制定一个智慧的定义是具有挑战性的，但格罗斯曼及其同事确定了四个关键特征作为明智推理的框架的一部分。其中一个是智慧的知识谦逊或对自己知识的限制有所认识，另一个是对超出问题范围的观点的欣赏。对社会关系变化的敏感性也是关键，以及对不同态度和信念的妥协或整合。

格罗斯曼及其同事还发现，支持我们日常决策中的智慧的最可靠方法之一是从第三方的角度来看待情境，就像给朋友提供建议一样。研究表明，当采用第一人称视角时，我们会关注“环境的焦点特征”，而当采用第三人称的“观察者”视角时，我们会更广泛地推理，并更关注人际关系和道德理想，如公正和客观性。从这种更广阔的视角看问题似乎有助于培养与明智决策相关的认知过程。

那么，当面临与配偶的分歧或在工作中进行合同谈判等需要我们个人利益的情况时，我们该怎么办呢？格罗斯曼认为，即使我们无法改变情境，我们仍然可以从不同的角度评估这些经历。

例如，在最近的经济衰退高峰期进行的一项实验中，毕业的大学生被要求反思他们的就业前景。学生们被指示将自己的职业想象为“好像你是一个远距离的旁观者”或“好像你就在那里”。被分配到“远距离旁观者”角色的组别显示出更多与智慧相关的推理（知识谦逊和对变化的认识），而对照组中的参与者则相对较少。

在另一项研究中，长期恋爱关系中的夫妻被要求通过旁观者的眼睛或从自己的角度来想象一个未解决的关系冲突。然后，参与者与伴侣讨论这一事件10分钟，之后他们写下对此的想法。在“他人眼中”的条件下，夫妻们更有可能依赖明智的推理 - 认识到他人的观点并寻求妥协，而相对于以自我为中心的条件下的夫妻。

格罗斯曼说：“自我去中心化促进了更关注他人并能够获得更宏观的观点的体验，从而认识到知识谦逊和变化。”

我们可能将智慧与智力或特定的个性特质联系在一起，但研究显示，智慧思维与固化智力以及开放性和宜人性的个性特质之间只存在微弱的正相关关系。格罗斯曼解释说：“一个人在不同情境下的智慧程度如何变化令人惊讶，而这种情境效应在理解明智判断与其社会和情感结果之间的关系时比一般的‘特质’更加有效。”他解释道：“也就是说，知道一个人在特定情境下会如何明智地行事，比知道一个人是否在‘一般情况’下明智更具信息量。”