Abstract

The study of wisdom in psychology had been neglected until the last twenty years. Recently, psychologists have begun to ask what wisdom is, and to explore the traits associated with it. The picture that has been forthcoming from that research has been very cognitive, with little or no mention of gender or age associations to the term. However, other bodies of research have identified a tendency for people to associate being older and being male with being wise. One way to investigate this discrepancy is to examine predictors of wisdom nomination while explicitly requesting age and gender information. One hundred undergraduate subjects were asked to describe their associations to wisdom, nominate wise men and women, and describe the reasons for their nominations. Results indicated that the most common wisdom associations included age and gender referents, and that the reasons given for nomination depended on the gender of the rater and nominee. Further studies showed that traits of wise nominees also differ with their age. Concluding studies investigate the robustness of these effects in different rating contexts. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for the study of wisdom development and the role of societal norms and stereotypes in trait attributions