Wisdom Tied To Life Satisfaction In Old Age, Says UF Researcher

July 26, 1996

GAINESVILLE — A wise outlook on life is more important to the elderly than the comforts of health, money or good housing, says a University of Florida researcher.

“Life satisfaction for the elderly is too often measured in terms of objective conditions like having enough money and being in good health,” said Monika Ardelt, a UF sociologist who recently completed a study on wisdom. “I found that developing wisdom in one’s later years has a far greater impact on psychological well being.”

A wise perspective is important to older people because it helps them to accept things the way they are at a time when it is hard to come to terms with the realities of aging, she said.

“Philosophically, old age becomes difficult for people because their physical abilities decline, they lose social importance when they retire, and they may lose their spouse and other loved ones, forcing them to confront their own deaths,” Ardelt said.

Although wisdom began to enter the public consciousness as a respectable topic during the 1980s, when pop psychology books prominently appeared on bestseller lists, it has been slow to be accepted by the scientific community, she said.

“There is a greater appreciation for wisdom in Eastern cultures, because people in

these societies place more emphasis on the spiritual realm than the West does,” Ardelt said. “Our culture is very rational and focused on knowledge. Look at the schools. What do they teach? Intellectual knowledge. There are few if any courses on ethics or human development.”

In the words of author John Kekes, wisdom is not necessarily about gaining new knowledge, but understanding the significance of already known truths, she said.

Ardelt said Kekes likens the process to grasping what it means to die. It is common knowledge that everyone must die — no one lives forever — but to realize what it really means to die in terms of one’s own situation takes wisdom, she said.

Ardelt drew the findings for her study from a well-known body of research findings collected in Berkeley, Calif., more than a half century ago. The parent of every third person born in the city between 1928 and 1929 was asked a series of questions about their background and well-being at that time and then again in 1968 and 1969.

Applying new psychological measurements enabled Ardelt to reinterpret the data. She found that wisdom had a greater effect on people’s life satisfaction in old age than objective measures such as quality of social relationships, socio-economic status, financial situation, physical health and physical environment.

Ardelt also found that crisis can have a positive or negative effect on wisdom, depending on whether or not one learned from life’s lessons.

In examining people who had lost more than one third of their family income between the Depression years of 1929 and 1935, Ardelt found that people who were wise in old age gained from the hardship, while those who were unwise in old age experienced a deterioration in psychological health. “My results show that something happened to some of these people during the Great Depression,” she said. “It’s very likely they learned to cope successfully with hardship and sorrow, and, in doing so, gained some wisdom.”

Encountering obstacles often forces people to look at life from different perspectives in order to solve problems, ultimately helping them to see a little more of reality and, in doing so, develop a little more wisdom, she said.

Ultimately, Ardelt hopes to learn why life experiences make some people wiser than others.

If she had to choose a 20th century leader with wisdom, Ardelt said it would be Gandhi. “Basically, people who are very wise see reality as it is, with no subjectivity or projections. They also are very psychologically advanced, and have sympathy and compassion for others.”