PSYCH 749Wisdom

Wisdom is an elusive topic. The official categorization of humans as homo sapiens declares that we are the "wise people". Yet, what does human wisdom entail? Until recently, it has not been in focus of psychological inquiry. Traditionally, this topic has remained in the domain of philosophy. Indeed, philo - sophia translates as love of wisdom. Philosophers tend to take a normative stand. In contrast, psychologists tend to explore the variations in the psychological processes underlying wisdom. We will focus on the unique combination of these approaches to understand what wisdom may be and how it may be obtained, and explore the distribution of wisdom-related processes in the domain of difficult life experiences and in daily life.