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The question about the relationship,
wisdom, and aging is critical.
I mean, as a matter of fact,
that's why we started
this research on wisdom in the first place.
I'm a geriatric psychiatrist,
and so I study older people,
and we found what I call the paradox of aging.
As people get older from 20 onwards,
the physical health declines, especially,
starting around age 40, 50, starts declining.
As people get older,
they start being more satisfied, more contented.
Why? Because that doesn't go with
their physical health going down
or the social stresses increasing,
and that's where I started wondering
whether there is wisdom of aging.
The concept of wisdom has been around for centuries.
It's mainly rooted in religions and philosophy.
But in recent decades,
it has also become a construct of
scientific importance with empirical research being done.
We started our research on wisdom over 15 years ago.
We define wisdom as a complex,
uniquely human personality trait.
It's complex because it has several specific components.
Those components are pro-social behaviors,
like empathy, compassion, altruism.
Second component is emotional regulation,
control over our emotions.
Third is self-reflection; ability to look inwards,
understand ourselves,
finding out what we did right and wrong,
and how can we get better.
Next one is acceptance of
uncertainty and diversity of perspectives.
The next one, on the other hand, is decisiveness.
While I do have uncertainties,
I should also be decisive.
I can't be sitting on the fence all the time.
The sixth one is spirituality,
which is different from religiosity.
Spirituality refers to accepting
the fact there's something beyond what we know,
what we see, something beyond even humanity.
One of the questions that often comes in is,
is wisdom same as intelligence?
The answer is, resoundingly no.
There are some really smart criminals
who are called creative psychopaths or sociopaths.
They will score very high on
IQ test and yet they are anti-social,
they're hurting other people.
That's not wisdom.
You can be smart but not be wise.
Currently, there are several scales
that are used to measure wisdom.
We developed a scale here called
San Diego Wisdom Scale, or SD-WISE.
The scale is different from others,
in that it is based partly on neurobiology.
We looked at what part of
the brain these components were localized.
We found it was same specific area
that seemed to be involved in all of these components;
prefrontal cortex and limbic striatum.
It looks like these components that are
described actually have a biological basis.
The question is, can we increase wisdom intentionally?
Are there studies that show that
you can improve wisdom with some intervention?
We have a paper that is in place in
a major journal that looked at
all the published randomized control trials
that sought to increase components of wisdom,
specifically, compassion and empathy,
emotional regulation, and spirituality.
The bottom line is that,
roughly half of the studies show that
the specific components of wisdom can be
increased significantly as a result of the intervention.
The interventions in most cases
are psychosocial or behavioral.
I believe that it is possible to
increase at least components of wisdom,
but you need to make an effort,
and it needs to be sustained effort.
But if you do that, you're likely to succeed.
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