Seeds of wisdom: Adolescents' knowledge and judgment about difficult life problems

The present study examined adolescents' wisdom-related knowledge and judgme nt with a heterogeneous sample of 146 adolescents (ages 14-20 years) and a comparison sample of 58 young adults (ages 21-37 years). Participants respo nded to difficult and ill-defined life dilemmas; expert raters evaluated th ese responses along 5 wisdom criteria. Our findings confirmed that in contr ast to adulthood, adolescence is a major period for normative age-graded de velopment in knowledge about difficult life problems. Adolescents performed at lower levels than young adults but also demonstrated substantial age in crements in performance. As expected, adolescents' performance varied as a function of criterion and gender. These results hold implications for resea rch on adolescent development and for the development of wisdom-related kno wledge and judgment.