title: Seeds of wisdom: adolescents' knowledge and judgment about difficult life problems.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: Center for Lifespan Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, Germany. pasupathi@psych.utah.edu
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Pasupathi
authors.forename: U M
authors.initials: UM
authors.lastname: Staudinger
authors.forename: P B
authors.initials: PB
authors.lastname: Baltes
mesh_terms: 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