How to seem wise, around the world

We all know someone we consider wise, whether that be a public figure, a friend, or a family member. Yet what we think of as wisdom can vary hugely from person to person, influenced by our politics, our philosophies, or our culture.

In Nature Communications, a multinational team takes a look at what people from around the world consider to be wisdom. Working with 16 culturally diverse samples from 11 countries, they find significant variation, culture to culture, expanding our understanding of what it means to be wise beyond the Global North.

Data was collected over two years from Slovakia, Morocco, Canada, Ecuador, Peru, America, Japan, North Korea, India, South Africa, and China. The total 2,650 participants included were a mix of indigenous and non-indigenous people, with a variety of socio-economic backgrounds.

Participants were asked to compare two individuals, each of whom had been given a culturally specific name and a description including characteristics that may convey wisdom. These individuals were teachers, doctors, or politicians described as religious, "just and fair", or interested in gathering information to make sense of the world.

They were then asked how likely it was, on a scale from one to five, that one of these individuals would engage in particular behaviours compared to the other. These included thinking before acting, applying what they had learned from life experiences, controlling their emotions, or demonstrating humility. They then rated the degree of wisdom they felt each of these individuals, and they themselves, had.

Across cultures, participants identified two key dimensions of wisdom: reflectiveness and socio-emotional awareness. The first includes characteristics such as thinking before acting, thinking logically, controlling one's emotions, and applying past knowledge to new experiences. The second was more focused on emotions: caring about others' feelings, assessing one's own emotions, and expressing humility. This was similar across cultures, with the two areas fairly stable across the eight cultural regions.

Wisdom, however, was not seen the same universally. The analyses uncovered some notable differences in traits associated with wisdom across cultures. Valuing nature and divinity, for example, was more strongly associated with wisdom in traditional communities in India and South Africa than elsewhere.

Interestingly, there was also some disagreement about which dimension certain factors actually fell under. In China, considering other people's perspectives was strongly connected to the socio-emotional awareness dimension, and less so with the reflectiveness dimension; in India, on the other hand, it was the exact opposite. This finding in particular suggests that people characterise particular behaviours very differently based on their cultural backgrounds — which, intuitively, makes sense.

If you're reading this with the goal of seeming more wise, one important thing to note is that bringing everything to the table seems to be important. While socio-emotional awareness was associated with wisdom, this was only the case when someone was also seen to possess reflectiveness: if an individual was seen only as emotionally aware, but not reflective, they were seen as less wise overall. Those considered the most wise, however, harnessed the power of both dimensions.

The next step, the team writes, is looking at the wider impacts of being wise. Do people with higher levels of reflectiveness or socio-emotional awareness deal with life's challenges better, for example, or are they considered more trustworthy? Future research could offer insights on this, and how it may differ from culture to culture.

Read the paper in full:
Rudnev, M., Barrett, H.C., Buckwalter, W. et al. (2024) Dimensions of wisdom perception across twelve countries on five continents. Nat Commun 15, 6375. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-50294-0

Want the latest in psychological research, straight to your inbox?
Sign up to Research Digest's free weekly newsletter.