Seeds of wisdom: adolescents' knowledge and judgment about difficult life problems.
The present study examined adolescents' wisdom-related knowledge and judgment with a heterogeneous sample of 146 adolescents (ages 14-20 years) and a comparison sample of 58 young adults (ages 21-37 years). Participants responded to difficult and ill-defined life dilemmas; expert raters evaluated these responses along 5 wisdom criteria. Our findings confirmed that in contrast to adulthood, adolescence is a major period for normative age-graded development in knowledge about difficult life problems. Adolescents performed at lower levels than young adults but also demonstrated substantial age increments in performance. As expected, adolescents' performance varied as a function of criterion and gender. These results hold implications for research on adolescent development and for the development of wisdom-related knowledge and judgment.
Pasupathi
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M
Center for Lifespan Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, Germany. pasupathi@psych.utah.edu
Staudinger
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UM
Baltes
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PB
D000293:Adolescent; D000294:Adolescent Behavior / Q000523:psychology*; D000328:Adult; D003071:Cognition; D005260:Female; D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment; D008016:Life Change Events; D008297:Male; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires