Older adults' wisdom on a "life-planning task": Characteristics and relation to life experiences

The purpose of the present study was to explore characteristics of the wisd om of older adults, and to examine the relation of their wisdom to their li fe experiences. The verbal responses of 50 older adults (65 82 years of age , average 71 years old) to 3 tasks concerning conflicts with others, based on Smith & Baltes's (1990) "life-planning dilemma" task, were recorded and later rated according to factual knowledge, proce dural knowledge, life-spa n contextualism, uncertainty, and value relativism. The results showed that scores tended to he higher on life-span contextualism and uncertainty. Alt hough no differences on the wisdom measure were found in terms of gender or education, scores for factual knowledge were higher for subjects with expe rience in managerial positions or various occupations. Scores for life-span contextualism. uncertainty. and value relativism were higher for persons w ho had participated in community activities, while scores for procedural kn owledge were higher for those spending more time reading newspapers every d ay. These results suggest that wisdom is closely related to life experience s.