#13 Monika Ardelt | How can you measure wisdom?
TRANSCRIPT SUMMARY
(This transcript summary was AI-generated and then edited by the podcast hosts for quality assurance)
# 13 MONIKA ARDELT | HOW CAN YOU MEASURE WISDOM?
- a podcast dialogue with Michael Noah Weiss and Guro Hansen Helskog
INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND
The Respons-Ability podcast welcomed Monika Ardelt, a professor of sociology at the University of Florida and a globally recognized scholar in the field of wisdom research. Ardelt is best known for her development of the Three-Dimensional Wisdom Scale, an influential tool used internationally to quantify and explore wisdom. In this rich and insightful conversation, she discusses the origins of her work, the philosophical and psychological foundations of wisdom, how wisdom can be measured and cultivated, and its connection to aging, well-being, responsibility, and spirituality.
THE ORIGINS OF A WISDOM RESEARCHER
Ardelt’s entry into wisdom research began during her doctoral studies at the University of North Carolina under Glenn Elder, a pioneer of life course research. She was interested in understanding life satisfaction in old age and began exploring variables such as health, education, financial security, and social support. However, these factors didn’t fully explain the variation in well-being among older adults. The idea that wisdom might be a key explanatory factor emerged somewhat intuitively.
Ardelt found inspiration in the work of Clayton and Birren, who had previously conceptualized wisdom as comprising three dimensions: cognitive, reflective, and affective. She adapted and expanded upon this, eventually renaming the affective component as “compassionate,” arguing that compassion is central to the emotional component of wisdom.
Her early research used existing qualitative data from a longitudinal study that began in 1929. Although that data was initially rated by independent judges rather than self-report surveys, the insight she gleaned from it laid the foundation for what would become her Three-Dimensional Wisdom Scale.
DEVELOPMENT OF THE THREE-DIMENSIONAL WISDOM SCALE
Encouraged by her faculty peers at the University of Florida, Ardelt set out to create a self-report measure of wisdom. She and her students combed through psychological measurement books to find items—particularly ones that were not copyrighted—that could represent the three dimensions of wisdom. After extensive review and consensus among her team, they identified 140 promising items. These were later reduced to 39 that reliably measured the cognitive, reflective, and compassionate dimensions while also correlating with each other, a crucial requirement for the integrated construct of wisdom.
The scale worked well in Western cultures, including the U.S., Canada, and Western Europe. However, it did not function effectively in India and potentially also in China. This was largely due to the way items were phrased—many were reverse-coded or measured the absence of wisdom, requiring respondents to disagree to score high on wisdom. This posed challenges in cultures where disagreeing with statements is socially discouraged or cognitively unfamiliar.
IS WISDOM UNIVERSAL?
Despite the measurement issues in non-Western cultures, Ardelt maintains that wisdom itself is a universal human capacity. Cross-cultural studies, including her own and those by other researchers like Nic Weststrate, show that when people around the world are asked to describe wise individuals, their responses consistently reflect the cognitive, reflective, and compassionate dimensions.
The disconnect, then, is not with the construct of wisdom itself but with the tools used to measure it. Cultural norms around communication, social desirability, and survey response behaviors can all impact the reliability and validity of self-report wisdom scales.
THE COMPONENTS OF WISDOM
Ardelt provides a detailed breakdown of her model:
- Cognitive Dimension: This involves knowledge about the deeper meaning of life, insight into oneself and others, and a tolerance for ambiguity. It reflects a person’s understanding of life’s complexities rather than mere factual knowledge.
- Reflective Dimension: Reflective individuals can see events and themselves from multiple perspectives. This capacity for introspection helps people acknowledge their own faults, which in turn fosters empathy for others.
- Compassionate Dimension: This entails sympathy and compassion toward others. It emerges naturally when people understand themselves and others deeply, cultivating tolerance and care.
For Ardelt, wisdom is not just abstract knowledge but an embodied way of being. It is not found in texts alone but in how individuals live and respond to the world.
MEANING-MAKING AND WISDOM
When asked about Viktor Frankl’s emphasis on meaning-making as a core dimension of wisdom, Ardelt acknowledges this and situates it within her cognitive dimension. Understanding the deeper meaning of life is indeed a part of wisdom, but she emphasizes that such understanding arises through reflection and the ability to transcend one's own subjective biases.
She also points out that learning from life’s experiences—especially negative or challenging ones—is essential for wisdom development. Meaning-making thus becomes both a product of and a pathway to wisdom.
WISDOM AND AGING
Ardelt's research indicates that wisdom tends to increase through early adulthood and into midlife, after which it remains relatively stable. Interestingly, her findings suggest a decline in the cognitive dimension of wisdom in very old age, which she attributes to declining health and a corresponding decrease in mastery—the sense of control over one’s life.
However, this is not a universal trend. Many older individuals continue to grow wiser if they continue to reflect and learn from their experiences. The critical factor is not age itself but the capacity for learning and reflection. As Ardelt notes, young people can also be wise, particularly if they have had transformative life experiences and are open to learning from them.
CAN WISDOM BE TAUGHT?
Ardelt is deeply invested in the idea that wisdom can be nurtured through education. She teaches a course titled “The Quest for Wisdom and Human Flourishing” at the University of Florida, which encourages students to practice Greek philosophical teachings, engage in weekly acts of compassion, and reflect on their experiences through journaling and class discussion.
By semester’s end, students typically show measurable increases on multiple wisdom scales, including Ardelt’s own. More importantly, their qualitative reflections suggest genuine growth in insight, empathy, and resilience. However, she notes an interesting paradox: as people become wiser, they may also become more honest in their self-assessments, which can sometimes result in lower scores on wisdom scales.
This underscores a methodological challenge in wisdom research: measurement must be nuanced and ideally combine both quantitative and qualitative approaches.
WISDOM AND SPIRITUALITY
The role of spirituality in wisdom is complex. Ardelt distinguishes her own view from that of her colleague Dilip Jeste, who includes spirituality as a formal dimension of wisdom. While Ardelt acknowledges that many wise individuals are spiritual, she chooses not to make spirituality a required component of wisdom. Her rationale is inclusivity—she wants to allow secular or atheist individuals to score high on wisdom if they embody its core dimensions.
That said, she recognizes that religions originally aimed to cultivate wisdom. Over time, however, many religious practices became focused on dogma and external rites rather than inner transformation. She draws a distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic religiosity, emphasizing that intrinsic religious orientation—where one lives according to spiritual principles—is more aligned with wisdom.
Her own data reveals no significant correlation between her wisdom scale and general religiosity, but a negative correlation with extrinsic religious orientation, suggesting that superficial religious practice may even hinder wisdom.
WISDOM, RESILIENCE, AND RESPONSIBILITY
Tying the conversation back to the podcast’s central theme of "responsibility," Ardelt affirms a strong connection between wisdom and resilience. Her research shows that wisdom correlates with mastery, meaning, and the capacity to respond constructively to life’s challenges.
She references Stoic philosophy, particularly Epictetus’ emphasis on discerning what is within one's control. A wise person, she says, focuses on their own attitudes and beliefs, taking responsibility for them while accepting what they cannot change. This mindset is foundational to both personal resilience and social responsibility.
CONCLUSION
Monika Ardelt’s insights offer a profound yet accessible framework for understanding wisdom not just as a scholarly concept, but as a lived practice. By breaking wisdom into cognitive, reflective, and compassionate dimensions, she provides a model that is both measurable and meaningful. Through her research, teaching, and thoughtful reflections, Ardelt bridges academic theory with real-world application, making a compelling case for the role of wisdom in human flourishing, responsibility, and resilience.
