The concept of wisdom: A cross-cultural comparison

To examine the meaning of wisdom cross-culturally American, Australian, Ind ian, and Japanese samples judged the similarity of seven personality descri ptors: "aged," "awakened," "discreet," "experienced," "intuitive," "knowled geable," and "wise." Multidimensional scaling (MDS) analysis revealed diffe rent clustering patterns for the Western (American and Australian) and the Eastern (Indian and Japanese) samples. For the Westerners. "wise" was clust ered with "experienced" and "knowledgeable," whereas the Easterners associa ted "wise" with "discreet." Further, the Western samples selected "wise" an d "knowledgeable' as the Favourable descriptors for an ideal self whereas m ixed results were obtained From the Eastern samples. The results suggest th at the conceptualization of wisdom in the West differs from that in the Eas t, with the former emphasizing the cognitive dimension and the latter stres sing the cognitive and the affective dimensions.