Handbook of Positive Psychology Phần 5 pps

Stau-Explicit TheoriesThe second cluster of wisdom theories repre-sents explicit psychological theories Baltes &Smith, 1990; Baltes & Staudinger, 1993; Pasu-pathi & Baltes, in press; Ste

siasm for learning by modifying lessons to

highlight which of these four fundamental

questions the information being taught is

pur-porting to answer

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24

Wisdom

Its Structure and Function in Regulating

Successful Life Span Development

Paul B Baltes, Judith Glu¨ck, & Ute Kunzmann

Toward a Positive Psychology of

Optimal Development

In the history of the humanities and the social

sciences, questions of perfection and optimality

in human behavior and human development

al-ways have been part of the intellectual agenda

Fueled by philosophers and theologists, many

proponents participated in the search for truth

criteria of perfection and optimality

(Brandt-sta¨dter & Schneewind, 1977; Lerner, 1986;

Te-tens, 1777) Since the times of secularization

and subsequently the advent of evolutionary

bi-ology, however, the answers to questions of

perfection and optimality became more and

more relative and uncertain

Perfection and Optimality:

A Dilemma for Psychology

Aside from analytical philosophy and

scholar-ship on ethics (e.g., Kekes, 1995), it is now

un-common for behavioral scientists and scholars

to argue the case of absolute perfection or

sin-gular optimality With a growing interest inpromoting a tolerant conception of humanrights and also the recognition of contextualvariations in form and function, as well as cul-turally based differences in criteria of adaptivefitness, behavioral and social scientists have de-veloped a preference for emphasizing particu-larities and the importance of flexibility in mak-ing decisions about what is right and wrong(Shweder, 1991) There are exceptions to thisreluctance in the psychological research com-munity to specify the foundation of optimality.Note, for instance, the theoretical orientation ofsome scholars in moral development and humanmotivation, such as Kohlberg (1971) or Maslow(1970) In this work, strong a priori assump-tions are made regarding the structure and hi-erarchy of values and motivational dispositions

We will return to this line of scholarship laterand outline some of its connections with ourwork on wisdom

Our main point, however, is that such and morality-oriented work in psychology isthe exception and often is evaluated as being of

value-doubtful significance Indeed, one can conclude

that psychologists have proceeded to focus their

studies on “secondary” virtues rather than on

“primary” virtues With secondary virtues we

mean attributes or processes that are relevant

for any goal attainment (e.g., traits like

persis-tence, conscientiousness, or agreeableness

mea-sured by personality questionnaires) without

evaluating these in terms of moral or ethical

principles Primary virtues, on the other hand,

are cognitive and motivational dispositions that

in themselves designate not only adaptive

fit-ness for individuals’ achievements but also the

idea of convergence of individual goal

achieve-ments with becoming and being a good person

from a communal and social-ethical point of

view Such a communal goods view of primary

virtues would suggest, for instance, that

indi-viduals consider only those goals and means as

ways of self-development that do not violate the

rights of others and, in addition, coproduce

re-sources for others to develop

On Positive Psychology

For psychology to be an empirical science,

ab-stinence regarding the question of a priori

def-initions of values and goals is understandable

However, this relative abstinence has its costs

(see also Kendler, 1999), and therefore the

re-cently growing search for a positive psychology

has its well-founded raison d’eˆtre (Seligman &

Csikszentmihalyi, 2000) The argument of

pro-ponents of positive psychology is that the

pri-mary focus of 20th-century psychology was too

much on treating the dysfunctional and that

this emphasis resulted in a neglect of the search

for optimality and the conditions of excellence,

individually and collectively

The call for changes in emphases of

psycho-logical inquiry has a long tradition, and when

those changes are propagated with force and

seemingly missionary zeal, it is typically

worth-while to explore ways to modulate the radicality

of the position taken This is true for the

pres-ent situation as well Therefore, and to prevpres-ent

a possible misunderstanding of our intellectual

perspective on this topic, we first offer some

modulating observations

On the one hand, we suggest that the

inter-pretation by Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi

(2000) of 20th-century psychology as largely

void of a spirit of positive psychology is

over-stated, if not misleading In its radicality, it

ig-nores, for instance, the fundamental positivityassociated with several fields of psychology—including developmental psychology, the one inwhich much of our own work is cast By thevery nature of the concept of development(growth), this field considers itself as a propo-nent of positivity (Harris, 1957; Lerner, 1998)and “perfection-oriented intervention” (Tetens,1777) in psychological functioning In recentpsychology, there are also other lines of seriousand cogent inquiry that highlight positivity.Consider, as a further example, the positivityemphasis of one of the most powerful theories

of modern psychology, that is, self-efficacy ory (Bandura, 1986, 1995; see also Maddux, thisvolume) Bandura’s work, while perhaps ema-nating from questions of dysfunctionality, is in-herently oriented toward improvement and op-timal functioning The radical conclusion byproponents of positive psychology about thelack of positivity in past psychological work,therefore, surely is an overstatement, and itseems primarily informed by past research inthat branch of psychology that is explicitly de-voted to the regulation of the dysfunctional,that is, clinical psychology

the-On the other hand, taking a radical position

on the need for a positive psychology, as man and Csikszentmihalyi (2000) do, can be de-fended if one treats it as a contribution tostrengthening lines of scholarship whose pri-mary interest is in improving our understand-ing of three contributors to a good life: positivesubjective experiences, desirable individualtraits, and civic virtues Such a view on psy-chology as theory- and practice-oriented enter-prise toward the betterment of human behavior

Selig-is well-grounded in the hSelig-istory of sciences ingeneral and psychology in particular

Positive Psychology and the Study

of Wisdom

Indeed, the emergence of our work on wisdomduring the recent decades fits well with the con-tinuous dynamic between understanding thepositive and efforts to compensate for a domi-nance of concerns for understanding and re-pairing deficits in human behavior Our interest

in the concept of wisdom emerged because of aone-sided focus on the negative in gerontolog-ical research in the 1960s and 1970s (Baltes &Smith, 1990; Baltes & Staudinger, 2000) The

dominant focus of aging research during that

period was on counting “the wrinkles and

fail-ures” of humans as they grow older There

were very few instances in which aging was

ex-amined in its potentially positive

manifesta-tions Perhaps the best known exception was

Erik Erikson’s (1968) theoretical work focused

on generativity and wisdom as central tasks of

adult life (see also M Baltes & Baltes, 1977;

Baltes & Labouvie-Vief, 1973; Clayton &

Bir-ren, 1980; Labouvie-Vief, 1982; McAdams &

de St Aubin, 1998; Perlmutter, 1990; Ryff,

1987, 1995)

A major reason for our efforts to articulate a

psychological theory of wisdom, therefore, was

the explicit commitment to understand what

might be positive in adult development and

ag-ing There were not many domains on which

we could orient our microscope One was

wis-dom In research on subjective beliefs about

ag-ing, wisdom turned out to be one of the very

few characteristics for which people expect a

positive trajectory in late adulthood

(Heckhau-sen, Dixon, & Baltes, 1989)

Actually, our first exploration into the

posi-tivity of old age involved cognitive training

studies to understand the role of practice deficits

and the latent learning potential of the older

population in the sense of plasticity (Baltes &

Lindenberger, 1988; Baltes & Willis, 1982;

Wil-lis & Baltes, 1980) In this research, we

dem-onstrated that at least up to age 80 or so, many

older adults possess more cognitive reserves

(plasticity or learning potential) than we

typi-cally expect, although we need to acknowledge

that we also observed definite losses in plasticity

with advancing old age Greatly influenced by

the work of Vivian Clayton (Clayton & Birren,

1980), the concept of wisdom became the

ral-lying point for our subsequent search for the

hidden treasure of old age (Baltes,

Dittmann-Kohli, & Dixon, 1984; Baltes, Smith, &

Stau-dinger, 1992; Dixon & Baltes, 1986)

Meanwhile, our work on wisdom is not only

informed by the study of positive aspects of

hu-man aging On the contrary, we presently

ceptualize wisdom as an instantiation of a

con-struct that, for all phases and contexts of life,

offers the potential for defining the means and

ends toward a good or even optimal life Based

primarily on philosophical work, our challenge

has been to extract statements about the means

and goals of life that imply a value position

(Kekes, 1995) From such extrapsychological

analyses, we specified a psychological theory ofwisdom Accordingly, it is the intermarriage ofphilosophical and psychological perspectivesaround the concept of wisdom that permits us

to revisit the century-old question of optimalhuman development

Wisdom as a Topic of Scientific Discourse About the Good Life

Wisdom has been discussed and studied in losophy and religion for thousands of years (for

phi-an overview, see Assmphi-ann, 1994; Kekes, 1995;Rice, 1958) More recently, scholars from otherdisciplines such as cultural anthropology, polit-ical science, education, and psychology also haveshown interest in wisdom Indeed, one can ar-gue that wisdom is becoming a center of trans-disciplinary discourse (e.g., Agazzi, 1991; Arlin,1990; Assmann, 1994; Baltes, 1993; Lehrer,Lum, Slichta, & Smith, 1996; Maxwell, 1984;Nichols, 1996; Nozick, 1993; Oelmu¨ller, 1989;Smith & Baltes, 1990; Staudinger & Baltes,1996b; Sternberg, 1990; Welsch, 1995)

In defining and studying wisdom from a chological point of view, we attempt to pay care-ful attention to what philosophers offer regard-ing the nature of the structure and function ofwisdom Without such attention, we would losethe special strength that the concept of wisdomholds for specifying the content and form of theprimary virtues and behaviors that individualsaspire to as they attempt to regulate their livestoward an “universal canon of a good life.”

psy-To prevent a possible misunderstanding, weacknowledge the scientific limits of our work onwisdom Specifically, any empirical manifesta-tion of wisdom falls short of the theoretical as-piration In this spirit, we do not maintain that

a psychological theory will ever capture wisdom

in its full-blown cultural complexity Our hope,however, is that this intermarriage of philoso-phy and psychology results in lines of psycho-logical inquiry where virtues, values, and themind can meet in a new and productive collab-oration We believe that this may be possiblebecause, at a high level of analysis, the concept

of wisdom appears to be culturally universal Toillustrate, Table 24.1 summarizes characteristicsthat in our historical studies of wisdom we havefound in Asian, African, and Western traditions(Baltes, 1993; Baltes & Smith, 1990; Baltes &Staudinger, 2000)

Table 24.1 General Criteria Derived from an Analysis of Cultural-Historical and

Philosophical Accounts of Wisdom

Wisdom addresses important and difficult questions and strategies about the conduct and meaning of life Wisdom includes knowledge about the limits of knowledge and the uncertainties of the world.

Wisdom represents a truly superior level of knowledge, judgment, and advice.

Wisdom constitutes knowledge with extraordinary scope, depth, measure, and balance.

Wisdom involves a perfect synergy of mind and character, that is, an orchestration of knowledge and virtues Wisdom represents knowledge used for the good or well-being of oneself and that of others.

Wisdom, though difficult to achieve and to specify, is easily recognized when manifested.

Psychological Theories of Wisdom:

From Implicit to Explicit Theories

Because of its enormous cultural and historical

heritage, a psychological definition and

opera-tionalization of wisdom is extremely difficult

This could be why many wisdom researchers

have restricted their research efforts to

lay-persons’ implicit theories of wisdom and wise

persons (Clayton & Birren, 1980; Holliday &

Chandler, 1986; Kramer, 2000; Sowarka, 1989;

Staudinger, Sowarka, Maciel, & Baltes, 1997;

Sternberg, 1985, 1990) Empirical research

based on explicit theories of wisdom-related

be-havior is relatively rare

Implicit Theories

With implicit theories, we mean the beliefs or

mental representations that people have about

wisdom and the characteristics of wise persons

In studies on implicit beliefs about wisdom and

wise persons, one finds quite a high degree of

overlap in the core aspects of wisdom, even

though authors have focused on slightly

differ-ent aspects and named their compondiffer-ents

dif-ferently

All conceptions include cognitive as well as

social, motivational, and emotional components

(e.g., Birren & Fisher, 1990; Kramer, 2000) The

cognitive components usually include strong

in-tellectual abilities, rich knowledge and

experi-ence in matters of the human condition, and an

ability to apply one’s theoretical knowledge

practically A second basic component refers to

reflective judgment that is based on knowledge

about the world and the self, an openness for

new experiences, and the ability to learn from

mistakes Socioemotional components generally

include good social skills, such as sensitivity and

concern for others and the ability to give good

advice A fourth motivational component refers

to the good intentions that usually are ated with wisdom That is, wisdom aims at so-lutions that optimize the benefit of others andoneself

associ-Sternberg’s (1998) effort at specifying a prehensive theory of wisdom is in the tradi-tion of these implicit lines of inquiry In histheory, consisting so far of a coordinated set ofcharacterizations rather than empirical work,Sternberg emphasizes the role of “balance.”Specifically, wisdom is conceptualized as the ap-plication of tacit knowledge toward the achieve-ment of a common good achieved through a bal-ance among multiple interests, including one’sown interests and those of others

com-A factor-analytic study conducted by dinger, Sowarka, et al (1997) illustrates the im-plicit theories tradition of wisdom One hun-dred and two participants rated 131 attributesregarding the degree to which each representsthe notion of an ideally wise person The at-tributes were selected from past work on im-plicit theories and work generated by the BerlinWisdom Paradigm (see subsequently) Asshown in Table 24.2 a four-dimensional struc-ture of an ideally wise person was obtained.Consistent with past research, these dimensionsrefer to (a) exceptional knowledge concerningthe acquisition of wisdom; (b) exceptionalknowledge concerning its application; (c) excep-tional knowledge about contextual and temporalvariations of life; and (d) person-related com-petencies

Stau-Explicit TheoriesThe second cluster of wisdom theories repre-sents explicit psychological theories (Baltes &Smith, 1990; Baltes & Staudinger, 1993; Pasu-pathi & Baltes, in press; Sternberg, 1990) They

Table 24.2 Implicit Beliefs about Wise People: Four Dimensions

Factor 1 Exceptional knowledge about wisdom acquisition

• comprehends the nature of human existence

• tries to learn from his or her own mistakes Factor 2 Exceptional knowledge about use of wisdom

• knows when to give/withhold advice

• is a person whose advice one would solicit for life problems Factor 3 Exceptional knowledge about context of life

• knows that life priorities may change during the life course

• knows about possible conflicts among different life domains Factor 4 Exceptional personality and social functioning

• is a good listener

• is a very humane person

are meant to focus on cognitive and behavioral

expressions of wisdom and the processes

in-volved in the joining of cognition with

behav-ior One main objective of such theories is to

develop theoretical models of wisdom that allow

for empirical inquiry—by means of quantitative

operationalization of wisdom-related thought

and behavior—as well as for the derivation of

hypotheses that can be tested empirically (e.g.,

about predictors of behavioral expressions of

wisdom)

To date, the theoretical and empirical work on

explicit psychological conceptions of wisdom

can be divided roughly into three groups: (a) the

conceptualization of wisdom as a personal

char-acteristic or a personality disposition (e.g.,

Er-ikson, 1959; McAdams & de St Aubin, 1998);

(b) the conceptualization of wisdom in the

neo-Piagetian tradition of postformal and dialectical

thinking (e.g., Alexander & Langer, 1990;

Kra-mer, 1986, 2000; Labouvie-Vief, 1990; Peng &

Nisbett, 1999); and (c) the conceptualization of

wisdom as an expert system dealing with the

meaning and conduct of life, as advocated in the

Berlin Wisdom Paradigm (e.g., Baltes & Smith,

1990; Dittmann-Kohli & Baltes, 1990;

Stau-dinger & Baltes, 1994) The latter is the focus

of the remainder of this chapter

The Berlin Wisdom Project:

Wisdom as Expertise in the

Fundamental Pragmatics of Life

In this section, we shall describe the conception

of wisdom upon which the Berlin Wisdom

Proj-ect is based Thereafter, we will discuss some

general considerations concerning the ment of wisdom across the life span

develop-The Content Domain of WisdomProceeding from the notion that wisdom in-volves some form of excellence (see Table 24.1),the Berlin Wisdom Project conceptualizes wis-dom as an expertise in the meaning and conduct

of life Our conceptualization of wisdom as pertise signals that we expect most people not

ex-to be wise What we expect, however, is thatthe behavioral expressions we observe in indi-viduals can be ordered on a “wisdom scale.” Ingeneral, wisdom is foremost a cultural productdeposited in books of wisdom rather than in in-dividuals

The contents to which this expertise of dom refers are the “fundamental pragmatics oflife,” that is, knowledge about the essence of thehuman condition and the ways and means ofplanning, managing, and understanding a goodlife (cf Baltes & Smith, 1990; Baltes & Stau-dinger, 1993, 2000) Examples of the fundamen-tal pragmatics of life include knowledge andskills about the conditions, variability, ontoge-netic changes, and historicity of human devel-opment; insight into obligations and goals inlife; knowledge and skills about the social andsituational influences on human life; as well asknowledge and skills about the finitude of lifeand the inherent limits of human knowledge

wis-As these examples reveal, the contents towhich wisdom refers are markedly differentfrom those of other domains that have been re-ported in the traditional expertise literature (Er-icsson & Smith, 1991) Most research on ex-

pertise has focused on domains where

well-defined problems can be used to

systemat-ically study experts’ and laypersons’ knowledge

systems (e.g., physics or chess) In the domain

of the fundamental pragmatics of life,

contrar-iwise, problems are almost by definition

ill-defined, and no clear-cut “optimal” solutions

exist (see also Arlin, 1990) Nevertheless, we

as-sume that wisdom has a clear conceptual core

and that its manifestations can be evaluated As

our empirical studies show, most people, after

some training, are able to reach high levels of

consensus in their evaluation of wisdom-related

products

Antecedents of Wisdom

Our concept of wisdom as expertise and the

linkage of this concept to life span theory

(Bal-tes, 1987, 1997) suggest an ensemble of three

broad domains of antecedents or determining

factors—each comprising internal and external

factors and processes—to be influential in the

development of wisdom at the level of

individ-uals Before describing these three domains in

detail, we need to discuss five more general

con-siderations concerning the ontogenesis of

wis-dom

First, as is typical for the development of

ex-pertise, we assume that wisdom is acquired

through an extended and intense process of

learning and practice This clearly requires a

high degree of motivation to strive for

excel-lence, as well as a social-cultural and personal

environment that is supportive of the search for

wisdom Second, wisdom is a complex and

mul-tifaceted phenomenon; therefore, for wisdom to

emerge, a variety of experiential factors and

processes on micro- and macro-levels are

re-quired to interact and collaborate Third, given

that wisdom involves the orchestration of

cog-nitive, personal, social, interpersonal, and

spir-itual factors, its antecedents are diverse in

na-ture Fourth, because developmental tasks and

adaptive challenges change across life, and the

human condition is inherently a life-course

phenomenon, we expect wisdom to reach its

peak relatively late in adult life Fifth, we

be-lieve that, as with other fields of expertise, the

guidance of mentors, as well as the experience

and mastery of critical life experiences, are

con-ducive to individual manifestations of wisdom

We now turn to the three domains of

onto-genetic conditions and processes that influence

the development of wisdom, namely, facilitativeexperiential contexts, expertise-relevant factors,and person-related factors (for a graphical rep-resentation of our developmental model, seeBaltes & Staudinger, 2000, Figure 1, p 121) In

our developmental model, facilitative ential contexts for the development of wisdom

experi-include chronological age, education, hood, professions that require individuals tostrengthen their skills in social-emotional intel-ligence, familiarity with books such as autobio-graphical novels, or the historical period, whichvaries along dimensions of salience and facili-tation in matters of the human condition A sec-ond domain that is central to the development

parent-of wisdom refers to expertise-relevant factors

such as experience in life matters, organized telage, the availability of mentorship in dealingwith life problems, and motivational factorssuch as a general interest in aspects of humanlife or a motivation to strive for excellence Fi-

tu-nally, we consider person-related factors such

as basic cognitive processes, aspects of gence, creativity, flexible cognitive styles, andpersonality dispositions such as openness to ex-perience or ego strength

intelli-These three domains of ontogenetic ences are interrelated, and we believe that, inthe sense of equifinality (Kruglanski, 1996), dif-ferent combinations of the domains may lead tosimilar outcomes Thus, there is no single “op-timal” pathway, but rather several differentways to acquire wisdom Nevertheless, it is as-sumed that there is a productive collaborationamong the relevant factors For example, exter-nal factors like the presence of mentors or theexperience and mastery of critical life experi-ences are certainly conducive to the develop-ment of wisdom For these factors to be influ-ential, however, preconditions such as beinghighly motivated to live in a “good” way and arequisite level of cognitive efficacy probably arenecessary The notion that wisdom requires thepresence of several intra- and interindividualfactors that need to interact in certain ways un-derlines that wisdom refers to qualities that can

influ-be acquired only by very few people

The Berlin Wisdom Paradigm

Our paradigm for assessing wisdom comprisesthe following three core features: (a) Study par-ticipants are confronted with difficult life prob-

Table 24.3 Examples of High-Level and Low-Level Responses

A 15-year-old girl wants to get married right away What should one/she consider and do?

Low Wisdom-Related Score

A 15-year-old girl wants to get married? No, no way, marrying at age 15 would be utterly wrong One has to tell the girl that marriage is not possible It would be irresponsible to support such an idea No, this is just a crazy idea.

High Wisdom-Related Score

Well, on the surface, this seems like an easy problem On average, marriage for a 15-year-old girls is not a good thing But there are situations where the average case does not fit Perhaps in this instance, special life circum- stances are involved, such that the girl has a terminal illness Or the girl has just lost her parents And also, this girl may be living in another culture or historical period Perhaps she was raised with a value system different from ours In addition, one has to think about adequate ways of talking with the girl and to consider her emotional state.

lems of fictitious people under standardized

con-ditions Specifically, they are asked to read short

vignettes about problems of life management,

planning, and review (b) Participants are then

instructed to think aloud about those life

prob-lems, and their responses are tape-recorded and

transcribed (c) A selected panel of trained

judges then rates the protocols according to five

criteria (see subsequent criteria) that were

de-veloped based on the general theoretical

frame-work outlined As an illustration, two responses

that would be scored as either high or low on

wisdom are presented in Table 24.3

A Family of Five Criteria for the

Evaluation of Wisdom-Related Material

In the context of our empirical work, we have

developed five qualitative criteria that can be

used for evaluating wisdom in any kind of

ma-terial The development of these five criteria was

guided by several lines of research, including

research on expertise, life-span psychology of

cognition and personality, the neo-Piagetian

tradition of cognitive development in adulthood,

and our cultural-historical analyses of wisdom

(see also Table 24.1)

The first two criteria derive logically from

our view of wisdom as an expert system They

are rich factual (declarative) knowledge about

the fundamental pragmatics of life and rich

procedural knowledge about the fundamental

pragmatics of life Factual knowledge related to

wisdom includes topics like human nature,

life-long development, interpersonal relations, social

norms, and individual differences in

develop-ment and outcomes Procedural knowledgecomprises strategies and heuristics for dealingwith life problems, for example, heuristics forthe structuring and weighing of life goals, ways

to handle conflicts, or alternative backup egies We view these two knowledge criteria asbasic criteria—they are necessary but not suf-ficient for achieving wisdom

strat-The three other criteria we refer to as

meta-criteria Life span contextualism refers to

knowledge about the many different themesand contexts of human life (education, family,work, friends, etc.), their interrelations, and cul-tural variations This criterion includes a lifespan perspective, for example, regardingchanges in the relevance of different domainsand in motivational priorities during ontogenyfrom birth into old age

Value relativism and tolerance refers to the

acknowledgment of individual and cultural ferences in values Note, however, that wisdomdoes not mean tolerance of any possible value

dif-or pridif-ority system On the contrary, wisdom cludes an explicit interest in achieving a balancebetween individual and collective interests and

in-a focus on humin-an virtues Aside from this damental constraint, however, wisdom encom-passes a high level of tolerance and sensitivityfor different opinions and values

fun-Recognition and management of uncertainty

refers to knowledge about the limitations of man information processing and about the lowpredictability of occurrences and consequences

hu-in human life Wisdom-related knowledge hu-volves knowledge about such uncertainties, butalso about ways to deal with such uncertainty

in-Figure 24.1 Cross-sectional age gradients and scatterplots for wisdom-related performance The left panelshows data from Pasupathi, Staudinger, and Baltes (2000), including outcomes of a spline analysis Theright panel summarizes results from several studies with adult samples (see also Baltes & Staudinger,2000; Staudinger, 1999).

For the purpose of evaluating the protocols

according to the five criteria, a select panel of

raters has been extensively trained in the

ap-plication of the criteria A protocol is classified

as approaching “wise” only if it has received

high ratings on all five criteria Raters are

trained on the basis of a manual (Staudinger,

Smith, & Baltes, 1994) Reliability and stability

of the rating procedure have been shown to be

very satisfactory

Selected Findings From the Berlin

Wisdom Project

In the following, we will discuss results

re-garding the relationship between age and

wisdom-related performance, the influence of

professional experience on wisdom-related

per-formance, the performance of persons

nomi-nated as wise, the main variables that predict

wisdom-related performance, and the activation

of wisdom-related knowledge in the context of

intervention or optimization research

Age and Wisdom-Related Performance

Guided by the search for positive aspects of

hu-man aging, age-comparative studies of

wisdom-related performance have been one of our

cen-tral foci (Baltes & Staudinger, 2000; Pasupathi,

Staudinger, & Baltes, 2000; Smith & Baltes,

1990; Staudinger, 1999) Figure 24.1

summa-rizes the findings of several studies based onheterogeneous samples in terms of educationaland socioeconomic backgrounds and represent-ing the life span from adolescence to old age.Note that these data are cross-sectional ratherthan longitudinal and therefore are contami-nated with cohort-related sampling and histor-ical change (cohort) factors

Our findings suggest that wisdom-relatedperformance, as measured by the Berlin Wis-dom Paradigm, increases sharply during adoles-cence and young adulthood (i.e., between 15 and

25 years) but, on average, remains relativelystable during middle adulthood and young oldage (i.e., between 25 and 75 years) Peak per-formances, however, seem to be more likely inthe 50s and 60s (Baltes, Staudinger, Maercker,

& Smith, 1995) Tentatively, our data also gest that wisdom-related performance may de-cline in very old age, beginning in current co-horts, at the average age of 75

sug-At first sight, it is surprising that wisdomseems to remain relatively stable during adult-hood and old age, at least up to age 75 Thisempirical finding is inconsistent with the notionthat wisdom may be a positive aspect of the ag-ing process In interpreting the empirical evi-dence, however, it is important to consider thedramatically different results from age-comparative studies on the fluid mechanics ofcognitive functioning These studies suggestthat basic elementary cognitive functions such

as speed of information processing begin to lose

efficiency much earlier in the life span than

wisdom-related knowledge and judgment

(Bal-tes, Staudinger, & Lindenberger, 1999;

Salt-house, 1996; Schaie, 1996) Seen in this light,

the stability of wisdom may represent the best

possible outcome old age and aging can bring

about, that is, maintaining one’s level of

wisdom-related performance despite

deteriorat-ing basic cognitive functions Beyond age 75,

however, the general decrease in basic cognitive

functioning most likely limits higher level

per-formance even in culture-rich domains such as

wisdom

The stability of wisdom during most of

adult-hood and old age is also consistent with the

no-tion that age per se is a necessary rather than a

sufficient condition for wisdom-related

perfor-mance to improve As we have outlined in our

developmental model of wisdom (see above),

several internal and external factors and

pro-cesses need to interact and collaborate as an

en-semble to ensure age-related improvement in

wisdom Moreover, to highlight the specific

strengths in old age, it may be necessary to

identify tasks and contexts of life that are more

specific to old age than the tasks used so far

The Role of Professional Experience

Given our definition and assessment of wisdom,

it is clear that most adults are not wise; only

some people have access to and acquire

knowl-edge about the conduct and meaning of life that

comes close to wisdom In our past research, we

were interested in identifying groups of people

with constellations of life experiences and

ex-ternal conditions that facilitate the acquisition

of wisdom-related knowledge

As a first step, we investigated the members

of a profession whose training and professional

practice both involve continued and varied

ex-perience with difficult life problems, namely,

clinical psychologists (Smith, Staudinger, &

Baltes, 1994; Staudinger, Smith, & Baltes,

1992) These clinical psychologists were

com-pared with professionals from fields in which

training and everyday job tasks were not

spe-cifically dedicated to dealing with difficult

prob-lems concerning life meaning and conduct As

predicted, clinical psychologists showed higher

levels of wisdom-related performance than the

members of other professions However, the

clinical psychologists did not reach expert levels

of performance in our theory-based

measure-ment: On the 7-point scale used in our ratings

for the wisdom criteria, the clinical gists’ mean was 3.8

psycholo-In interpreting this result, it is important toconsider that the relatively higher level ofwisdom-related performance displayed by clin-ical psychologists may not only be due to train-ing and profession-related experiences Rather,members of a profession may represent a selec-tive group of people in terms of personality,motivation, and intellectual abilities However,

a communality analysis with professional cialization and multiple intellectual and person-ality dispositions as independent variables re-vealed professional specialization as thestrongest unique predictor, accounting for 15%

spe-of the variance in wisdom-related performance(Staudinger, Maciel, Smith, & Baltes, 1998).Thus, professional training and experience inthe field of clinical psychology seem to facilitatethe acquisition of wisdom-related knowledge

The Performance of Persons Nominated

as WiseBut could it be that clinical psychologistsshowed superior performance because they wereworking on wisdom tasks that were developed

by people having the same profession? To vestigate whether our assessment proceduremight be biased in this direction, we conducted

in-a study in which we compin-ared the performin-ance

of clinical psychologists with that of people whohad been nominated as wise, independently ofour definition of wisdom (Baltes et al., 1995).The 21 wisdom nominees of this study werepersons of public distinction selected by a panel

of nonpsychologists based on an intensiveDelphi-like nomination process Although thenominees were heterogeneous in terms of age(ranging from 41 to 79 years), most of the nom-inees were older adults (on average age 64).Overall, the wisdom nominees performed atleast as well as the clinical psychologists Wis-dom nominees even excelled in the task of ex-istential life management and the criterion ofvalue relativism If there is a psychological bias

to our conception of wisdom, this does not vent nonpsychologists from being among thetop performers

pre-Predictors of Wisdom-RelatedPerformance

One of our central assumptions is that wisdomrequires and reflects the orchestration of several

Figure 24.2 The psychometric location of wisdom-related performance: Unique and shared portions ofpredictive variance of measures of intelligence, personality, and the personality-intelligence interface (Stau-dinger, Lopez, & Baltes, 1997).

domains of human functioning On the level of

person-related factors, this includes an

integra-tion of intellectual abilities, personality

dispo-sitions, and characteristics representing the

in-terface between intelligence and personality

Staudinger, Lopez, and Baltes (1997)

investi-gated the joint and unique effects of these three

broad domains of person-related factors on

wisdom-related performance Overall, 33

psy-chometric indicators from 14 different tests

cov-ering psychometric intelligence (4 indicators),

personality measures (12 indicators), and the

personality-intelligence interface (17 indicators)

were assessed The three key findings of this

study are summarized in Figure 24.2 First, at

least 10 of the 33 indicators turned out to be

significant predictors of wisdom-related

perfor-mance Overall, these 10 predictors accounted

for 40% of the variance in wisdom-related

per-formance None of the indicators alone

ex-plained more than 18%, however

Second, consistent with the orchestration idea

of wisdom, there was a significant overlap

be-tween the three predictor domains: All three

do-mains shared 9% of the predicted variance

In-telligence and personality each contributed only

a small amount of unique variance (2% each),

whereas the intelligence-personality interface

variables explained 15% of unique variance

Among the interface variables, cognitive styles

(Sternberg, 1996) and creativity showed the

strongest correlations to wisdom-related

perfor-mance Judicial style (i.e., a preference for

eval-uating and comparing) and progressive style(i.e., willingness to move beyond existing rulesand tolerance for ambiguity) turned out to bethe cognitive styles most predictive of wisdom.Third, after introducing all of the 33 predic-tors into the regression analysis, parallel mea-sures (tasks) of wisdom accounted for an addi-tional 19% of the otherwise unexplainedvariance This finding indicates that ourwisdom-related measures share a relatively highamount of unique variance: Wisdom is differentfrom a combination of adaptive abilities andcharacteristics related to standard measures ofpersonality, intelligence and their interface

Optimization Research: ActivatingWisdom-Related KnowledgePositive psychology highlights the importance

of optimizing human functioning and ing designs of facilitative interventions In thefollowing, we will discuss two studies to illus-trate the potential of theory-based interven-tions

employ-Interactive Minds: The Collaborative Aspect of Wisdom

Social-One of our central ideas is that wisdom requiresand results from social collaboration As men-tioned, we argue that individuals by themselvesare only “weak” carriers of wisdom (Baltes &Smith, 1990; Staudinger, 1996) To examine the

role of social interaction in wisdom-related

per-formance, Staudinger and Baltes (1996a)

con-ducted a study in which participants responded

to wisdom-related tasks under different

condi-tions of collaboration and social support

Partic-ipants in the first group discussed the problem

with a significant other person before giving

their responses individually; those in a second

group engaged in an inner dialogue with a

per-son of their choice about the problem before

re-sponding; and those in a third group were just

given some free time to think about the

prob-lem by themselves prior to responding In

ad-dition, some participants in the

interactive-minds conditions received additional appraisal

time after the interaction to reflect about the

dialogue and the problem on their own

The findings clearly suggest that social

inter-action, real or imaginary, can facilitate

wisdom-related performance Specifically, two

inter-active-minds conditions, namely, external

dialogue plus appraisal time and internal

dia-logue, produced a substantial increase in

per-formance amounting to almost one standard

de-viation An interesting additional result was

that older adults profited more from the

actual-interaction condition than did the young adults

Intervention Research: Activating

Mental Scripts Associated With Wisdom

by Means of a Memory Technique

In her dissertation, Bo¨hmig-Krumhaar (1998)

explored whether using a specific memory

tech-nique improved wisdom-related performance

Specifically, the goal was to improve

perfor-mance on two of the five wisdom criteria—

value relativism and life span contextualism—

by teaching participants to use a cognitive

strat-egy derived from the Method of Loci, a

mne-monic used in past studies on memory plasticity

(e.g., Baltes & Kliegl, 1992; Kliegl, Smith, &

Baltes, 1990) Participants were first instructed

to imagine traveling around the world on a

cloud, visiting four places in four different

cul-tures: Germany, Italy, Egypt, and China Using

visual illustrations and a list of object stimuli,

participants were told to imagine life in those

cultures and to construct some mental images

related to the four places To attain a certain

level of automaticity and generalization,

partic-ipants subsequently were presented with two

practice wisdom tasks

After this training phase, participants took a

posttest in which they were told to use the

“cloud journey” while working on new wisdomtasks As predicted, the intervention led to sig-nificant increases in the two targeted wisdomcriteria: value relativism and life span contex-tualism This study illustrates how relativelypermanently stored and practiced mentalscripts, such as a worldwide journey on clouds,can activate and co-organize bodies of knowl-edge that are available in principle but typicallywould not be used as a guiding strategy Such

a strategy of orchestrated activation is in linewith our view (see subsequently) that bodies ofwisdom-related knowledge are available butgenerally not bound together until mental rep-resentations or mental scripts such as the wis-dom concept are used as a coordinating cue (seealso Stich, 1990)

Wisdom as a Metaheuristic to Orchestrate Behavior Toward Excellence in Mind and Virtue

Recently, we have proposed an additional aspect

in our developing theory of wisdom (Baltes &Staudinger, 2000; Glu¨ck & Baltes, 2000) Wehave argued that wisdom can be viewed as ametaheuristic that activates and organizesknowledge about the fundamental pragmatics oflife in the service of optimizing an integrationbetween mind and virtue

A heuristic usually is defined as a highly tomatized and organized strategy for directingsearch processes or for organizing and using in-formation in a certain class of situations(Dawes, 1988; Gigerenzer, Todd, & The ABCGroup, 1999; Kahneman, Slovic, & Tversky,1982; Nisbett & Ross, 1980) The function ofheuristics in judgment and decision making is

au-to reach solutions under conditions of limitedresources Thus, if it is impossible to use thefull information—and this is typical of mostreal-world situations—heuristics guide whichand how much information is taken into ac-count in making a decision

We believe that wisdom-related problemsrepresent a class of situations that calls for theuse of heuristics In other words, what Simon(1983) defined as bounded rationality (i.e., usingrealistic amounts of time, information, and cog-nitive resources in making decisions) and effi-cient use of the critical information about waysand ends of a good life seem to be operativewhen dealing with wisdom tasks Note in this

context that we use the term heuristic in the

Table 24.4 Sample Data from a Pilot Study Using a Wisdom Instruction

“How Did You Translate the Instruction to Give a Wise Response in Your Responses?”

“Keeping it as general as possible and not falling back upon personal experiences Seeing it in a totally neutral way, only from the content of the task.”

“Well, being tolerant toward this young girl, not calling her totally crazy, but just looking at where the problem

is situated.”

“Taking the reasons of such a young person into account, not being prejudiced So that I think that wise,

in quotes, is when one thinks about it, approaches it from several aspects, from several sides, not just judging a priori but looking at different sides.”

“I think wise is for me in a way if one views one’s own situation relative to that of others and simply puts it into a larger context.”

“Projecting oneself into someone else, to look how this person would act, to get off this impulsive level, this level of personal involvement a little bit I think that’s what is important, plus taking one’s time.”

“Taking oneself back and looking at this respective person and the circumstances and thinking about how could one be helpful to the person with what one says.”

same positive sense as Gestalt psychologists

such as Wertheimer and Duncker (e.g.,

Duncker, 1945), Herbert Simon (e.g., Simon,

1956), and Gigerenzer and his colleagues

(Gig-erenzer et al., 1999) Wisdom experts may have

more elaborate, flexible, and efficient systems of

heuristics available than people with low levels

of wisdom-related knowledge As a

conse-quence, wisdom experts may achieve high levels

of performance when working on problems

con-cerning the fundamental pragmatics of life

fas-ter and with fewer cues (cf Hatano, 1988)

We consider wisdom a metaheuristic rather

than a simple and task-specific heuristic Given

the wide range of wisdom as a body of

knowl-edge about the fundamental pragmatics of life

and the human condition, its applicability can

be expected to be wide and operative at a high

level of aggregation (see also Baltes &

Stau-dinger, 2000) As a metaheuristic, wisdom

guides the strategies that a person selects with

respect to a large number of problems in the

fundamental pragmatics of life (see also Glu¨ck

& Baltes, 2000)

The search and judgment processes activated

by wisdom could, for example, include

transla-tions of the three metacriteria for the evaluation

of wisdom-related materials from the Berlin

Wisdom Paradigm Thus, the meta-criterion of

value relativism and tolerance could be

trans-lated into heuristics such as considering others’

opinions, trying not to be influenced by affect

(Bodenhausen, 1993; Bodenhausen, Sheppard,

& Kramer, 1994), or strategies of perspective

change (Hirt & Markman, 1995) Life span

con-textualism could be translated into processes ofsearch and judgment, such as always collectinginformation on a person’s life context or assum-ing people to be situation-dependent rather thanstable in their personality and behavior (Ross &Nisbett, 1991) Recognition and management ofuncertainty could be translated into subheuris-tics such as postponing a decision in doubt ornot basing judgments on too small samples ofbehavior (Kosonen & Winne, 1995; Nisbett,Krantz, Jepson, & Kunda, 1983; Nisbett, Fong,Lehman, & Cheng, 1987) Note that within thisframework, a wise decision does not necessarilyhave to be based on more information or morecareful planning; it also can be reached by usingfew, but optimal cues drawn from a high level

of knowledge and experience

Table 24.4 gives some quotations from a pilotstudy in which we asked participants to try togive wise responses to the tasks of the BerlinWisdom Paradigm and then asked them howthey had gone about this task The responseslisted in Table 24.4 illustrate the kind of can-didate subheuristics named previously.Another term that is useful to understandthe orchestrating function of wisdom as a

metaheuristic is that of binding (Ashby,

Prinz-metal, Ivry, & Maddox, 1996; Singer, 1993,2000; Stich, 1990) On a cognitive-mental-representational level, the objective of bindingcan be understood as an operation or a set ofoperations by which networks are achievedwhose primary function is to link distinct bodies

of knowledge—in this instance, otherwise related bodies of knowledge about the means

un-and ends of living a good life Thus, the specific

focus of this wisdom-generated binding process

would be the interrelating of mind and virtue

toward excellence (see also Baltes & Freund, in

press)

Our general theoretical orientation—as well

as research on subjective beliefs about wisdom

and wise persons—would provide the initial

in-formation about the territory that is bound

to-gether by the wisdom heuristic As noted

pre-viously, the activation of such a metaheuristic

likely is associated with an ensemble of

subheu-ristics Thus, even though wisdom comprises a

number of different, interrelated facets from

different domains of human functioning,

in-cluding pragmatic knowledge (e.g., knowledge

acquired during the experiences of a long life),

procedural knowledge (e.g., heuristics and

strat-egies, including the ability to think and reason

logically), emotional maturity (e.g., a balance in

general emotional status), and self- as well as

other-regarding motivation (e.g., the focus on

virtues vs vices), their activation in the context

of wisdom coordinates (binds) these into an

en-semble Such a binding coordination would be

the unique quality of wisdom

Let us return to the opening of this chapter,

that is, the discussion of positivity in human

behavior: We argue that wisdom is a concept

that identifies positive means and ends of a good

life (Baltes & Staudinger, 2000; Kekes, 1995)

From a metaheuristic perspective, a wise person

has available an elaborate, effective, flexible, and

orchestrated system of subheuristics in the

do-main of the fundamental pragmatics of life and

uses this system as a repertoire to reach positive

and avoid negative outcomes

Linking Wisdom to Psychological

Theories of Motivation and Values

Research on wisdom has a tradition of being

treated as a separate arena Therefore, in this

concluding section, we attempt to embed work

on wisdom in other lines of scholarship and

il-lustrate its fertility To this end, we consider the

interface between the scholarship on wisdom

and the psychological study of motivation and

values

Note at the outset that our position is that

past psychological work refrained from a

spec-ification of the “truth value” of values and goals

because psychology is not a

normative-prescriptive science Therefore, only indirect idence such as subjective beliefs about norms orthe social desirability of psychological proper-ties could be relied on—leaving the scientificstudy of values without an explicit criterion ofevaluation

ev-On a metalevel of analysis, our argument isthat the philosophy-based treatment of thestructure and function of wisdom provides analternative This alternative allocates to the phi-losophy of wisdom the frame of referencewithin which the general means and ends of agood life can be defined Subsequently, psy-chologists can proceed to explicate how peopleconsider such wisdom-based general criteriawhen pursuing their individual goals

Thus, we attempt to open the door into terdisciplinarity and ask whether such an ap-proach assists in the organization of personalvalues and motivational dispositions that psy-chologists have studied To this end, we brieflydescribe several theoretical schemes of values,desirable motivational dispositions, and self-directed strengths as developed in psychologicalresearch Subsequently, we specify their poten-tial linkages to the wisdom construct Our ex-pectation is that this effort will open up notonly new lines of inquiry but also thoughtsabout the cultural selection process associatedwith human development In other words, theevolution of a conception of wisdom is onesource of culture-based selection from the en-ergizing system that biological-genetic evolu-tion has evolved as the motivational nature ofHomo sapiens The concept of wisdom mayfunction as a selector for enhancement and re-duction of the emotions, values, and motives in-volved in becoming a “good” human being.Psychological Theories of Values

in-A first example: Numerous value researchershave relied on the value theory developed byMilton Rokeach (1973) This theory is based onthe following definition of values: “A value is

an enduring belief that a specific mode of duct or end-state of existence is personally orsocially preferable to an opposite or conversemode of conduct or end-state of existence” (Ro-keach, 1973, p 5) As indicated by this defini-tion, Rokeach distinguished two types of values.Values about modes of conduct, which he also

con-called instrumental values, refer to beliefs about

which means (e.g., being honest, courageous, or

modest) lead to certain desirable outcomes In

contrast, values about end states of existence,

also called terminal values, refer to desirable life

outcomes themselves (e.g., salvation, a world at

peace)

Although Rokeach has concentrated his

at-tention on the distinction between instrumental

and terminal values, he considered that

instru-mental and terminal values can be broken down

further according to whether they refer to

in-dividual being or to other people’s

well-being Instrumental values with self-focus were

called competence values (e.g., being ambitious,

intellectual, independent); those with a focus on

other people’s well-being were called moral

val-ues (e.g., being helpful, forgiving, polite)

Sim-ilarly, terminal values with self-focus were

called “personal values” (e.g., self-respect, a

comfortable life, freedom), and those with an

other-focus were labeled “social values” (e.g.,

equality, national security, a world at peace)

Rokeach’s ideas about the origins and

devel-opment of values suggest—as the wisdom

con-cept would imply—that the distinction between

self- and other-centered values may be of

fun-damental importance He assumed: “Values are

the joint results of sociological as well as

psy-chological forces acting upon the individual—

sociological because society and its institutions

socialize the individual for the common good to

internalize shared conceptions of the desirable;

psychological because individual motivations

require cognitive expression, justification, and

indeed exhortation in socially desirable terms”

(Rokeach, 1973, p 29) In this view, values

rep-resent personally and socially desirable versions

of individual needs and social demands

More recently, Schwartz and his colleagues

(Schwartz, 1992; Schwartz & Bilsky, 1987,

1990) developed a theory of personal values

that is based on a similar idea about the origins

of human values Specifically, the authors

assume that the multitude of values are

rep-resented by 10 value types (e.g., power,

achieve-ment, hedonism, stimulation, and

self-direction), which in turn arise from three

requirements for survival: biological needs of

the individual, requisites of coordinated social

interaction, and the survival and welfare needs

of groups Schwartz and his colleagues have

proposed that the 10 value types can be

inves-tigated on a more general level because they are

indicators of two bipolar value dimensions,

“openness to change versus conservation” and

“self-enhancement versus self-transcendence.”

However, most of this research group’s ical work on individual and cultural differences

empir-in values and the consequences of values for cial behaviors has focused on the 10 value types(Schwartz, 1990)

so-Interestingly, although both Rokeach andSchwartz consider individual needs and socialdemands as driving forces in the development

of personal values, their theories and empiricalwork have not focused on the central impor-tance of balancing self-serving and other-serving values for living a good life As men-tioned, on the most abstract level ofdescription, Rokeach emphasized the differencebetween instrumental and terminal goals.Schwartz and his colleagues primarily have in-vestigated people’s value systems on the level

of 10 value types

As we will elaborate subsequently, aphilosophy-based treatment of wisdom stronglysuggests that the coordinated and balanced pur-suit of self-serving and other-serving values is

a central contributor to positive developmentand a good life (see also Sternberg, 1998) Thus,

in contrast to past approaches on personal ues, a wisdom-informed classification wouldconsider the differentiation between self-serving and other-serving values as most fun-damental

val-Another research area that is directly relevant

is work on moral competence This line of quiry, beginning with Piaget (1932) and Kohl-berg (1969), has been concerned with the cog-nitive and behavioral manifestations of what wehave called other-serving values (see also Turiel,1998) Notably, proponents of research onmoral competence have made explicit what theyconsider as developmental ideals from a theo-retical and a priori basis For example, Kohlbergformulated in his theory of moral competencesix stages of development, each being closer to

in-an ideal style of moral reasoning based on versal ethical principles such as equality and re-spect for individual dignity (e.g., Kohlberg,

uni-1969, 1971)

To add a third area of interest, consider search developed in the context of humanisticpsychology, which traditionally has focused onconcepts related to the self (e.g., Bu¨hler, 1959;Maslow, 1970; Rogers, 1961) Maslow, for in-stance, proposed in his theory on human mo-tivation that individuals have five basic needs(physiological, safety, love, self-esteem, andself-actualization needs) that can be arranged in

re-a hierre-archy on the bre-asis of the principle of

rel-ative potency (Maslow, 1970) According to

Maslow, these five needs indicate levels of

psy-chological adjustment ranging from poorly to

well adjusted

As interesting as these approaches toward a

classification of personal values may be, from

the perspective of the concept of wisdom, they

are limited in that they have little to say about

the interplay of self-serving versus

other-serving values While research on moral

com-petence has been one-sided in that its focus lies

on the manifestations of other-serving values,

theories on human motivation—and this is true

for most contemporary psychological research,

at least in the Western tradition—have

con-cerned themselves primarily with the

develop-ment of self-serving goals and dispositions It is

here that the philosophy-based treatment of

wisdom comes into play and may give us, on a

metalevel of analysis, some indication of how

self- and other-serving values may be

orches-trated in the service of optimal functioning and

a good life In other words, the concept of

wis-dom provides a metaperspective on the

organi-zation of personal values that integrates more

limited approaches advanced in past

psycholog-ical research on morality and human

motiva-tion Notably, Rokeach’s and Schwartz’s

theo-retical work comes closest to what we as wisdom

researchers have in mind

Views From Wisdom on Personal Values

and Positive Life Span Development

In the following, to illustrate our general line

of argument, we shall discuss two of the seven

core features of wisdom (see Table 24.1) in more

detail: (a) an orientation toward the common

good involving the well-being of oneself and

others, and (b) a balanced, holistic, and

inte-grated view of the world of human affairs We

believe that both characteristics have important

implications for a theoretical classification of

personal values and their orchestration toward

a positive development and a good life (see also

Sternberg, 1998)

Wisdom Is an Orientation Toward the

Common Good

Wisdom inherently is an intra- and

interper-sonal concept On the one hand, wisdom entails

knowledge about how we can lead a personally

meaningful and satisfying life Consistent with

this idea, Garrett (1996) proposes the following

definition of wisdom: “Wisdom is that standing which is essential to living the bestlife” (p 221) Ryan (1996) suggests a similardefinition of a wise person: “S is wise if (1) S is

under-a free under-agent, (2) S knows how to live well, (3)

S lives well, and (4) S’s living well is caused byS’s knowledge about how to live well” (p 241)

To cite a third philosopher, Kekes (1983) madethe same general point: “Wisdom is acharacter-trait intimately connected with self-direction The more wisdom a person has themore likely it is he will succeed in living agood life” (p 277) “Wisdom is to arrangeone’s life so as to aim to satisfy those wantsthat accord with his ideals” (p 285) “Growth

in wisdom and self-direction go hand in hand”(p 286) Notably, this line of thinking concern-ing the link between knowledge and behavioraimed at individual growth and self-realization

in wisdom, is not new It can be found in thetreatments of wisdom of the classical Greekphilosophers such as Socrates, Plato, and Aris-totle (for an overview, see Baltes & Staudinger,

in press)

On the other hand, and perhaps contrary toMaslow’s and Ryan’s primary focus on theself, from a philosophical point of view, a con-cern with interpersonal issues is equally part ofthe core of wisdom Wisdom is not knowledgeused for individual well-being alone; it also isused for the well-being of others (e.g., Kekes,1995) In this spirit, philosophical-historical ac-counts of wisdom have focused on the property

of a well-meaning counselor giving good advice

to someone in a difficult situation and not ofsomeone whose advice serves his or her ownneeds (for an overview, see Baltes & Stau-dinger, in press) Notably, this interpersonalorientation also is reflected in dictionary defi-nitions of wisdom, which consistently regardgood advice in difficult and uncertain matters

of life as one central facet (e.g., Oxford Dictionary of the English Language, 1933,

p 191)

Taking these considerations together, sophical approaches to defining wisdom, as di-verse as they may be on more concrete levels

philo-of analyses, converge regarding the idea thatwisdom includes the availability and application

of knowledge about successful development of

oneself and others In this vein, wisdom

consid-ers the ancient idea of a good life, in which ceptions of individual and collective well-beingare tied together, and it involves the insight thatone cannot exist without the other

con-Wisdom Is Integrative, Holistic, and

Balanced Knowledge

There is a second central characteristic of

wis-dom that is equally important for questions

concerning the potential of wisdom to function

as a guide for leading a good life That is,

wis-dom is integrative; it focuses on the whole and

the weighing and moderation of its parts

Bal-ance, in particular, is at the core of wisdom (see

also Sternberg, 1998) The preceding discussion

on values already has hinted at this problem

The concept of wisdom would suggest that

psy-chological research needs to be designed to

ad-dress the collaborative relationships among

in-dividuals’ multiple values and motives

Notably, this “modulated-balance” line of

philosophical-based thinking is also central to

several psychological theories of wisdom In

particular, dialectical approaches in the

neo-Piagetian tradition of postformal thought also

have emphasized the importance of balance in

wisdom These theories have focused on

inte-gration of various kinds of thinking

(Labouvie-Vief, 1990), multiple self-systems such as

cog-nitive, conative, and affective (Kramer, 1990,

2000), and various points of view (Kitchener &

Brenner, 1990) As mentioned earlier, Sternberg

(1998) has proposed a theory of wisdom that

also emphasizes the notion of balance

Expand-ing on earlier theories, his theory emphasizes

that wisdom involves not only a balance among

multiple internal systems of functioning but

also a balance between a person and his or her

context

To return to our central question: Can the

philosophy-based concept of wisdom give us

some indication about the organization and

or-chestration of personal values underlying the

good life? Our answer to this question is

posi-tive On a metalevel of analysis, wisdom would

suggest that holding and pursuing personal

val-ues oriented toward one’s own development and

other people’s well-being is a key facet in

pos-itive development and a good life Importantly,

it is the balanced and coordinated pursuit that

indicates wisdom rather than the one-sided

fo-cus on developing either one’s own potential or

others’ potential

Suggestions for Future Research

To our best knowledge, there has not been

much research on the connections among

wis-dom and personal values Does wiswis-dom-related

knowledge make a difference in a person’s tem of self- and other-serving values, as wewould predict? How many and which self- andother-serving values do wise persons have? Italso remains to be seen whether people with dif-ferent degrees of wisdom-related knowledge dif-fer in specific types of self- and other-servingvalues Wisdom may make a difference partic-ularly in terms of what researchers of moralityand human motivation may call more highlydeveloped self- and other-regarding values (e.g.,other-serving values that reflect more abstractmoral principles or self-serving values that refer

sys-to an individual’s self-actualization)

It is not only interesting to empirically vestigate how many and what types of personalvalues people who approach wisdomlike quali-ties may hold Equally important is the question

in-of whether wiser people are particularly cient in applying and pursuing their self- andother-serving values For example, does wisdommake a difference in the behavioral manifesta-tions of other-serving values? Is there an asso-ciation between wisdom-related knowledge andwhat Rossi (in press) has called social produc-tivity and responsibility? Are wise people whogive high priority to self-serving values related

effi-to self-actualization particularly likely effi-to haveactualized their individual potentials?

Finally, and as we have mentioned already,especially the orchestration of self-and other-serving values may call for the knowledge andexpertise typical of wisdom—given that, inmany situations, it may not be possible to pur-sue both kinds of values In a particular situa-tion, for example, is it better to seek personalsuccess or to remain honest, to act obediently

or independently, to seek self-respect or socialrecognition? It would be interesting to knowhow wisdom-related knowledge influences peo-ple’s decisions, behaviors, and emotional reac-tions when they are faced with those situationsinvolving conflicts among self- and other-serving values

A philosophy-based conception of wisdomwould predict that a wise person does not preferand pursue self-serving values at the expense ofother-serving values and vice versa (for a sim-ilar view, see Snyder, Rand, & Sigmon, this vol-ume) Thus, in contrast to research on moraldevelopment, this approach would not considerself-interests as less important than someoneelse’s interest Similarly, pursuing self-interests

at the expense of other people’s interests rarelycan be considered as wise Rather, the optimal

solution to problems involving conflicting

self-serving and other-self-serving values would be one

in which the self both gains and gives

With such observations, we have returned to

the opening of this chapter, that is, the search

for a construct that on an interdisciplinary plane

of analysis permits the joining of philosophical

and psychological conceptions of positivity in

human behavior and human development The

puzzle has not been solved yet We hope,

however, that this courtship has contributed to

a better understanding of why the concept of

wisdom is being revisited and holds much

promise

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Self-Based Approaches

25

Reality Negotiation

Raymond L Higgins

This chapter presents an overview of the

devel-opment and status of the reality negotiation

construct It relates the construct to a variety of

coping processes, including contemporary

mod-els of psychotherapeutic change and the

main-tenance of social support systems Following

def-initional, historical, and measurement sections,

an overview of reality negotiation strategies

precedes illustrations of the dynamically

inter-active nature of reality negotiation, with

ex-amples relating to coping with adversity, the

in-dividual’s effects on larger social groups, and

the maintenance of social support The chapter

concludes with a brief discussion of the

account-ability challenges faced by contemporary

con-structivist approaches to psychotherapy,

fol-lowed by some speculations about how a culture

and psychology committed to a positive view of

people might facilitate peoples’ movement

to-ward self-realization

Reality Negotiation Defined

Snyder and Higgins (1988a, 1988b) first

intro-duced the reality negotiation construct in

dis-cussions of how excuses lessen the self-image

threats associated with negative outcomes The

central focus was on how people interpret

neg-ative self-relevant events in order to preservetheir positive self-theories More recent discus-sions have been expanded to include reality ne-gotiation processes that preserve or enhance

negative self-theories in the face of positively

self-discrepant information (Barone, Maddux, &Snyder, 1997; Snyder & Higgins, 1997).The reality negotiation construct proposesthat people continually appraise the extent towhich they are causally linked to the results ofactions and the extent to which those outcomesare positively or negatively valenced (Higgins

& Leibowitz, 1999; Higgins & Snyder, 1991).This linkage-valence framework may be repre-sented as a two-dimensional matrix wherein

“linkage to outcome” (ranging from none to tal) forms the x-axis and “valence of outcome”(ranging from positive to negative) forms they-axis As Figure 25.1 illustrates, a person’sself-theory may be mapped onto this matrix ac-cording to the extent to which the self is seen

to-as being causally linked to outcomes Figure25.1 illustrates an individual with a positiveself-theory who tends to associate the self withpositive outcomes and to disassociate the selffrom negative outcomes Figure 25.2, in con-trast, depicts an individual with a negative self-theory who preferentially associates the selfwith negative outcomes

Figure 25.1 Positive-self theory on valence-of-act

and linkage-to-act dimensions and the associated

reality negotiation processes

Figure 25.2 Negative-self theory on valence-of-act

and linkage-to-act dimensions and the associated

reality negotiation processes

Reality negotiation processes sustain (or

manage the rate of change in) one’s self-theory

by manipulating the perceived negativity or

positivity of outcomes, the individual’s

per-ceived causal linkage to outcomes, or both

Peo-ple with positive self-theories who are causally

linked to negative acts may attempt to decrease

their perceived linkage to them (see arrow 1 on

Figure 25.1), to reduce the perceived negativity

of those acts (see arrow 2 on Figure 25.1), or

both Similarly, people with negative

self-theories who are confronted with having done

something laudable may try to undercut the

ex-tent to which they are seen as causal (see arrow

1 on Figure 25.2), to lessen the perceived

posi-tivity of the act (see arrow 2 on Figure 25.2), orboth

Theoretically, people with positive theories also might want to enhance their pos-itive status by working to increase their per-ceived causality for desirable outcomes (arrow 3

self-on Figure 25.1), or even to decrease the ceived positivity of outcomes they did not cause(arrow 4 on Figure 25.1) In a parallel fashion,people with negative self-theories may work toincrease their perceived causal linkage to nega-tive outcomes to which they are only weaklyconnected (see arrow 3 on Figure 25.2), or toincrease the positivity of outcomes they havenot authored (see arrow 4 on Figure 25.2) I willnot elaborate further on reality negotiations inthe service of negative self-theories in this chap-ter, however, because of the present emphasis

per-on positive processes (for such discussiper-ons, seeBarone et al., 1997; Snyder & Higgins, 1997)

Reality Negotiation in Context

The reality negotiation construct is part of thesocial constructivist tradition (Barone et al.,1997) that dates back to philosophers such asKant (1781/1965), Hegel (1807/1967), andVaihinger (1925) Moreover, the idea that peo-ple’s social interactions are aimed at securingviews of reality that preserve their “self-theories” clearly implies that the “self,” itself,

is a social construct This notion, too, borrowsfrom early expressions of self-constructive per-spectives (Cooley, 1902; Mead, 1934; Piaget,1936/1963) The roots of the reality negotiationconstruct also extend into those early psycho-therapeutic traditions that incorporated perspec-tivistic and phenomenological orientations intotheir view of self-(re)constructive processes(e.g., Adler, 1912; Rogers, 1951)

The proximal impetus for the reality ation construct, however, grew out of work onthe effectiveness of excuses (Higgins & Snyder,1989; Snyder, Higgins, & Stucky, 1983) A cen-tral assumption was that excuses preserve one’spositive sense of self and one’s sense of being

negoti-in control by reducnegoti-ing the perceived negativity

of acts and/or by weakening the individual’sperceived responsibility for them (Snyder, Hig-gins, & Stucky, 1983) As such, the work onexcuses was based on that of earlier authorswho had stressed the importance of self-esteemmaintenance as a fundamental human motive(Epstein, 1973; Maslow, 1968; Rogers, 1951), as

well as the scholars who had demonstrated the

self-serving nature of causal attributions for

positive and negative outcomes (Arkin, Cooper,

& Kolditz, 1980; Miller, 1976; Zuckerman,

1979)

The negotiation aspect of the reality

negoti-ation construct reflected the fact that excuse

at-tributions for negative acts can be effective only

when both the excuse maker and the target

au-dience accept the attributions as plausible

(Hig-gins & Snyder, 1989; Snyder & Hig(Hig-gins, 1988a,

1988b) The requisite “give-and-take” between

the protagonist and his or her audience

consti-tutes the negotiation Even within solitary

con-texts, effective excuses require negotiation

be-tween the person and his or her mental

representations of the judgments of important

others Epstein (1980), for example, has argued

that the self “develops out of the desire of the

child to gain approval and avoid disapproval”

(p 86) A sense of personal causal agency and

an ability to judge the valence of one’s actions

in the eyes of others are fundamental not only

for the individual’s ability to stay on the

posi-tive side of the approval-disapproval continuum

but also for the consolidation of such

self-related schemata as “self-theories” (Barone et

al., 1997; Higgins & Snyder, 1991; Snyder &

Higgins, 1997) The term revolving self-images

(Snyder, Higgins, & Stucky, 1983, p 38) was

coined to acknowledge that people’s self-image

concerns necessarily reflect the values of their

role models and caregivers and that,

there-fore, even internal appraisal processes

in-volve a fusion of internal and external audience

concerns

Given its focus on excuses, early thinking

about reality negotiation emphasized shifting

causal attributions for negative outcomes from

“sources that are relatively more central to the

person’s sense of self to sources that are

rela-tively less central” (Snyder & Higgins, 1988b,

p 23) This definition explicitly incorporated

only a (causal) linkage dimension The valence

dimension was first introduced when Snyder

(1989) presented the construct of “hoping.”

Whereas excuses weaken causal linkages to

ative outcomes or decrease their perceived

neg-ativity, hoping was conceived as a process of

in-creasing causal linkages to positive outcomes.

The valence-linkage matrix, therefore,

con-trasted the excusing and hoping processes, and

the reality negotiation construct became one

that emphasized self-esteem enhancement as

well as self-esteem maintenance

Individual Differences in Reality Negotiation

Any measure that references standards of formance, values, causal attributions, or per-ceived control potentially relates to individualdifferences in reality negotiation A few mea-sures, however, have been directly associatedwith reality negotiation tendencies The Self-Handicapping Scale (Jones & Rhodewalt, 1982;Strube, 1985), a measure of anticipatory excusemaking, for example, stands out as an index that

per-is related directly to the preferential use oflinkage-weakening reality negotiation tactics(see Rhodewalt, 1990, for review)

Measures of self-esteem also have been lated to differences in reality negotiation Vary-ing levels of self-esteem have been shown torelate to the use of downward social comparison(a valence-shifting tactic; Aspinwall & Taylor,1993); to differences in the use of self-enhancement (linkage-shifting) strategies (Bau-meister, Tice, & Hutton, 1989); and todifferences in excuse-making behavior (Tice &Baumeister, 1984) Differences in self-handicapping also have been shown to vary as

re-a function of high versus low uncertre-ainty re-aboutone’s self-esteem (Harris & Snyder, 1986).Measures of depression also appear to be re-lated to reality negotiation Individuals whoscore high on measures of depression, for ex-ample, are prone to making internalizing(linkage-increasing) rather than externalizing(linkage-weakening) attributions for negativeevents (for review, see Burns & Seligman,1991) Relatedly, there is evidence that dispos-itional (linkage-increasing) attributions for fail-ure are more typical of depression than are at-tributions to personal behaviors (Anderson,Miller, Riger, Dill, & Sedikides, 1994) Both dis-positional and behavioral attributions are to

“internal” sources, but dispositions are morelikely than specific behaviors to lie close to one’s

“core” sense of self (see also Janoff-Bulman,1979)

To date, only four individual differences sures have been developed specifically to tap re-ality negotiation tendencies Previously, Ipointed out that Snyder’s (1989) article intro-ducing his concept of “hope” also introduced avalence dimension into the linkage-valence ma-trix Subsequently, both trait (Snyder, Harris etal., 1991), and state (Snyder et al., 1996) ver-sions of the Hope Scale have been developed.These scales tap individuals’ motivation and

mea-perceived ability to achieve desired goals and

show modest positive correlations with a wide

array of indices related to self-presentation,

cop-ing, and health (for reviews, see Barone et al.,

1997, pp 266–268; Snyder, 1994; Snyder,

Cheavens, & Michael, 1999; Snyder, Irving, &

Anderson, 1991) Hope also has been posited to

underlie the capacity for positive psychological

change (Snyder, Ilardi, Michael, & Cheavens,

2000) The items from these adult-oriented

scales also have been adapted for use with

chil-dren The Children’s Hope Scale (Snyder et al.,

1997) has been shown to have robust

psycho-metric properties, as well as both convergent

and discriminant validity

The fourth and only theory-derived measure

specifically designed to assess reality

negotia-tion proclivities is the Linkage Into Valenced

El-ements Scale (LIVE; Snyder & Samuelson,

1998) The LIVE items sample from eight life

arenas (i.e., appearance, health, intelligence,

school, job, leisure, personality, and

relation-ships) and refer to both positive characteristics

(e.g., “superior intellectual abilities”) and

neg-ative characteristics (e.g., “very poor academic

performance”) Respondents use 9-point rating

scales (1 ⫽ “not at all” to 9 ⫽ “totally”) to

indicate the extent to which they view

them-selves as causally linked to the outcomes

rep-resented in the items At present, there are no

published data relating to the validity or

psy-chometric properties of the LIVE Scale

Sam-uelson (1996), however, tested an earlier,

80-item version of the scale with college students

and found support for its construct validity,

in-cluding a positive correlation with the trait

ver-sion of the Hope Scale

Reality Negotiation: An Overview

This section will survey those reality

negotia-tion strategies that assist the individual in

main-taining a positive sense of self in the face of

negatively discrepant information

Reality Negotiation as an

Automatic Process

Reality negotiation processes are often

auto-matic and “unconscious” in the sense that the

individual may be unaware of the self-serving

nature of his or her appraisals (Higgins &

Sny-der, 1989) Particular contexts activate

corre-spondingly relevant self-schemas and render

certain kinds of information more expected and

more easily recognized (Bargh & Pratto, 1986;Markus & Wurf, 1987), as well as more readilyrecalled (Higgins, King, & Mavin, 1982) As-suming the individual detects no significant dis-crepancy with his or her self-schema, incominginformation is likely to simply confirm expec-tations (Higgins, 1989; Jones, 1990) and is un-likely to stimulate effortful, conscious process-ing

Actively conscious processing, for purposes ofcomprehension and responding, becomes morelikely as self-relevant information becomes in-creasingly unexpected or schema-discrepant(Hastie, 1984; Pyszczynski & Greenberg, 1981).The need to deal with external witnesses toschema-discrepant information also may pushthe individual’s reality negotiation into aware-ness (Higgins & Snyder, 1989; Snyder & Hig-gins, 1988a, 1988b)

Linkage-Focused Reality Negotiation

As noted previously, excuses are strategies forpreserving positive self-theories either by de-creasing the perceived negativity of outcomes or

by shifting causal attributions away from theindividual’s core sense of self (e.g., his or hersense of being a “good” or competent person).Effective excuses, then, weaken linkages to neg-ative outcomes (see arrow 1 in Figure 25.1).Some excuses (e.g., denial) attempt to com-pletely sever causal linkages Most excuses,

however, aim to shift causal attributions from

one internal source to another, less central, ternal source rather than to completely exter-nalize and sever them Many of these excusescan be understood from the perspective pro-vided by Kelley’s (1967, 1971) theory of attri-bution

in-Consistency-lowering excuses, for example,

may frustrate disposition-based causal tions by implicating lack of effort (Miller,1976), lack of intention (Rotenberg, 1980), orunforeseeable consequences Other linkage-

attribu-shifting tactics such as consensus-raising

ex-cuses also deflect dispositional attributions byelevating the importance of situational causes(e.g., task difficulty, bad luck) over personalcauses (e.g., ability) in determining outcomes.Both consistency-lowering and consensus-raising excuses weaken but do not sever the in-dividual’s causal linkage to the outcomes (Mil-ler, 1976; Zuckerman, 1979)

Kelley’s attribution principles also apply toanticipatory excuses For example, a person mayset up a consistency-lowering excuse by failing

to prepare for an evaluation Similarly, an

in-dividual might contrive a consensus-raising

ex-cuse by pronouncing an upcoming task too

dif-ficult and, therefore, unfair (Smith, Snyder, &

Handelsman, 1982) Such “self-handicapping”

strategies (Berglas & Jones, 1978; Jones &

Ber-glas, 1978) capitalize on Kelley’s (1971)

dis-counting principle Namely, when outcomes are

associated with more than one possible cause,

the resulting confusion both obfuscates and

weakens the attribution of causality to any one

cause If a person is evaluated while intoxicated,

for example, it is difficult to clearly ascribe a

subsequent failure to incompetence

Theoreti-cally, self-handicaps also may capitalize on

Kel-ley’s (1971) principle of augmentation In other

words, when an individual succeeds despite

be-ing handicapped, attributions to ability may

actually be enhanced (for more on

self-handicapping, see Higgins, Snyder, & Berglas,

1990)

Many potential self-handicaps are temporary

(e.g., intoxication, fatigue) Others, such as test

anxiety (Smith et al., 1982), hypochondriasis

(Smith, Snyder, & Perkins, 1983), or shyness

(Snyder, Smith, Augelli, & Ingram, 1983), to

name but a few, may constitute enduring

char-acteristics of the individual Although focusing

causal attributions on one’s negative

disposi-tional characteristics would seem incompatible

with preserving one’s positive self-theories,

do-ing so may actually be quite effective—if the

dispositional characteristic is less central to the

individual’s core sense of self than is the

threat-ened self-attribute Threats to one’s basic sense

of competence, for example, may be thwarted

by claiming to suffer from some relevant form

of performance anxiety See, however, Higgins

and Snyder (1989) and Snyder and Higgins

(1988c) for discussions of the potential

draw-backs of such “incorporated” excuses

Valence-Focused Reality Negotiation

In contrast to reality negotiation strategies that

target causality, valence-shifting strategies aim

to yield more positive (or, at least, less negative)

views of threatening outcomes (see arrow 2 in

Figure 25.1) One valence-shifting strategy, for

example, is to discredit the source of

threaten-ing information (Aronson & Worchel, 1966;

Clair & Snyder, 1979) Blaming victims (e.g.,

“She got what she deserved”) or invoking

ex-onerative moral reasoning (e.g., “It was for her

own good”; “It would have been even more

hurtful to tell the truth”) also may soften the

perceived negativity of an act (Lerner, 1980).Similarly, direct attempts to minimize the neg-ativity of outcomes (e.g., “It’s not as bad as itlooks”; Snyder, Irving, Sigmon, & Holleran,1992) or to redefine them (e.g., “lies” become

“white lies,” emotional abuse or neglect comes “tough love”) also may be effective innegotiating more benign views of image-threatening outcomes

be-Yet another valence-shifting tactic is to findmeaning in an adverse outcome An illness ordisability, for instance, may wreak havoc with

an individual’s sense of being a “good and control” person Finding the silver lining in thedark cloud, as in finding hidden benefits or

in-“meaning” in one’s malady, however, may helprestore individuals’ positive sense of themselves(see Tennen & Affleck, this volume; Nolen-Hoeksema & Davis, this volume)

Reality Negotiation as Coping

The view that reality negotiation enables people

to sustain their self-theories in the face of confirming information suggests that, to some

dis-extent, adaptive or healthy self-theories are lusional A major coping function associated

il-with reality negotiation, then, is sustainingthose adaptive advantages associated with posi-tive self-illusions (see, for reviews, Brown,1991; Taylor & Brown, 1988) Such advantagesinclude the positive effects of perceived control

on affect (Dunn & Wilson, 1990), health(Schulz, 1976), task persistence (Bandura,1989), performance (Dweck & Leggett, 1988),and psychological well-being (Alloy & Abram-son, 1988)

Although it seems counterintuitive, reality

negotiation mechanisms that support negative

self-illusions also may be adaptive at times.Brown and McGill (1989), for example, foundthat ostensibly desirable life changes were as-sociated with increased illness among individu-als with low self-esteem but with decreased ill-ness among individuals with high self-esteem.Presumably, positive changes were stressful forthe low-esteem individuals because they re-sulted in some degree of identity disruption Infact, the idea that the stressfulness of an event

is more related to the degree to which it mands personal redefinition than to its objectivenegativity finds support in studies reported bySwann (Swann, Hixon, & De La Ronde, 1992;Swann, Wenzlaff, Krull, & Pelham, 1992) andHammen, Marks, Mayol, and DeMayo (1985),

de-all of which point to the importance of

self-consistency or self-verification in people’s

ef-forts to maintain a sense of predictability and

control (see Swann & Pelham, this volume)

Although the preceding remarks emphasize

reality negotiation’s role in promoting

self-theory stability, it would be erroneous to

con-clude that the essential aim of the process is

stasis Rather, it is to manage the pace and flow

of self-theory change Indeed, it is this

rate-limiting aspect that renders reality negotiation

fundamental to our efforts to cope with the

im-plications of growth-promoting change as well

as with adversity As stated by Higgins and

Lei-bowitz (1999), reality negotiation “aids in

cop-ing, not because the resulting products are

in-herently self-enhancing or self-verifying, but

rather because the individual experiences a

de-gree of control over the self-definitional

impli-cations of the person-data transaction” (p 30).

People must change and adapt as they traverse

their lives In doing so, however, it is important

that they maintain a continuous and integrated

sense of self It is the self-constructive process

of negotiating reality that makes it possible to

unfold our lives in an orderly manner

Reality Negotiation:

Who Controls the Process?

Earlier discussions of reality negotiation

ac-knowledged the role of external audiences in the

process but focused primarily on the

individ-ual’s image maintenance aims Recently,

how-ever, a more dynamically interactive vision of

reality negotiation has emerged (Higgins &

Lei-bowitz, 1999; Snyder & Higgins, 1997) Snyder

and Higgins (1997), for example, proposed that

social groups, primarily through such

sociali-zation agents as parents, encourage individuals

to adopt and sustain self-theories that

comple-ment and support the larger social interests

Higgins and Leibowitz (1999) extended this

analysis to include the idea that, through their

control of material and social support resources,

social groups or agents reward and shape the

individual’s interpretations of reality so as to

advance the social agents’ image maintenance

goals A social agent’s standing as a “good

par-ent,” for example, is related to the extent to

which his or her children embody culturally

fa-vored values Also, a school system’s stature in

the community is proportional to the extent to

which its students embrace the virtues of

schol-arship and studiousness Naturally, such

per-spectives raise interesting questions about whoultimately controls the direction and outcome ofthe reality negotiation process Is it the individ-ual, or is it the social group with which the in-dividual identifies and traffics?

The answer is both Through their roles assocializing agents, and through their controlover material rewards and social support re-sources, representatives of society at large, aswell as more narrowly focused interest groups,encourage individuals to affiliate with group-approved goal and value structures Moreover,

to the extent that the individual’s sense of self

is constructed from the reflected appraisals ofimportant others (e.g., Markus & Cross, 1990),societal agents shape the very content of indi-viduals’ self-theories along with the parameters

of those things they experience as self-theorydiscrepant Relatedly, group memberships pro-vide frames of reference from which to evaluate

“reality,” not to mention standards of mance with which to assess the “goodness” or

perfor-“badness” of outcomes Social groups also ence the reality negotiation process throughtheir role as audiences or judges of the accept-ability of an individual’s interpretation ofevents Through their mere presence, for ex-ample, audiences may foreclose on an individ-ual’s ability to engage in automatic, uncon-scious processing of outcomes and, in doing so,necessitate a more overt, conscious, and occa-sionally conflictual negotiation of the meaningsthat are to be attached to those outcomes Inkeeping with the perspective that reality nego-tiation is dynamically interactive, however, it isimportant to recognize that the individual alsoinfluences society’s participation in the enter-prise Among other things, it often happens that

influ-an individual’s actions have implications for influ-anaudience’s image or collective “self-theory.”Consequently, audiences frequently have a di-rect interest in shaping how an individual’s ac-tions are construed

Through either their own or others’ tive, individuals affiliate with groups or individ-uals whom they perceive as serving their self-definitional interests Once established, theseidentifications endow such groups with vestedinterests in the individual’s outcomes, and viceversa This easily can be seen in close or inti-mate relationships (e.g., marriages), where oneindividual’s outcomes, in essence, become com-munity property In such instances, partnersmay have strong needs to promote similar views

initia-of reality Each partner has individual imageconcerns, but those concerns may converge in a

group identity For example, one child-abusing

spouse’s acts of brutality may be defined by

both spouses as “tough love” in order to affirm

(or not threaten) the nonabusing spouse’s

self-theory of being a loving and protective parent

Group investment in the definition of individual

outcomes, however, extends well beyond the

arena of intimate relationships The currently

converging issues of gun control and school

vi-olence provide a timely example

There have been many instances in recent

years in which seemingly senseless acts of

vio-lence by deranged or disenfranchised

individu-als have so threatened the images of particular

interest groups that massive lobbying and

pub-lic relations campaigns have been launched to

promote self-serving views of those events For

example, the violent acts of adolescent or even

preadolescent children have provoked the

Na-tional Rifle Association (NRA) to point the

fin-ger of causation away from the problem of

pro-liferating gun availability Instead of guns, they

blame the government’s lax enforcement of

ex-isting gun laws, the specter of creeping moral

decay within society, the lack of

state-sanctioned prayer in public schools, and the

U.S Supreme Court’s refusal to allow the Ten

Commandments to be posted in school

hall-ways In fact, anything that serves to shift

causal attributions away from gun availability

or ownership is fair game In a remarkable

March 12, 2000, television interview, NRA

spokesperson, Wayne LaPierre, accused the

president of the United States of covertly

wish-ing for and encouragwish-ing schoolyard gun

may-hem because it served his antigun policy ends

This episode is remarkable not only because

LaPierre’s accusation attempted to shift the

blame to an evil, scheming president but also

because it tried to recast the NRA as the victim

of the very gun violence others accused it of

abetting Such linkage-shifting tactics differ

only in scope from those used by individuals to

put the best face on a personal dilemma

More-over, the tactics are not restricted to

linkage-shifting

The NRA and related groups also embrace

valence-shifting strategies Nobody, of course,

argues that the victims of high school or grade

school shootings “had it coming.” Rather, the

sanctity of the Second Amendment to the

Con-stitution of the United States is invoked to

counter any suggestions that widespread gun

availability is problematic According to this

logic, gun availability is both good and, as a

founding principle of the Bill of Rights, an

es-sential guarantor of our civil freedoms larly, when Wayne LaPierre’s accusation ofPresident Clinton was labeled as extremist andirresponsible, other NRA supporters counteredthat, in view of Clinton’s ethical shortcomings(e.g., the Monica Lewinsky affair), such Machi-avellian scheming would not be out of characterfor him (i.e., they proffered a dispositional at-tribution) Far from accepting the premise thatgun availability is a problem, a few gun advo-cates have even argued that the real problem

Simi-with schoolyard violence is that there are not enough guns They reasoned that gun-wielding,

grade school miscreants would think twiceabout opening fire if they thought that theirteachers and principals also might be “packingheat” and prepared to shoot back This partic-ular valence-shifting tactic, however, met withsuch widespread incredulity that it has largelydisappeared from public negotiations over howgun violence in the schools is to be viewed.Such instances of reality negotiation aimed atalleviating threats to group image clearly illus-trate the interplay between individual andgroup identities Another arena, that of copingwith serious health problems, also can be used

to illustrate the workings of reality negotiationbetween protagonists and their audiences Forthe present purposes, the specific focus will be

on the dynamics of sustaining social support sources when faced with health problems

re-Reality Negotiation and Social Support

When people are faced with illness or disability,they commonly respond by searching for thecause or causes of their suffering (Taylor, 1983).Often, the causes that are identified appear tofurther coping by preserving the individual’ssense of being in control (Higgins & Snyder,1991) Investigators, for example, have found

self-blame to be associated with better

adjust-ment to such health threats as spinal cord injury(Bulman & Wortman, 1977), breast cancer(Timko & Janoff-Bulman, 1985), and renal fail-ure (Witenberg et al., 1983) It also appears,however, that the causes that individuals iden-tify may help them maintain their relationshipswith important people in their social environ-ments (Higgins & Leibowitz, 1999)

Because of their dependence on others forboth material and emotional support, the vic-tims of illness or disability need to sustain theirsocial networks They may be especially de-pendent on others for both material and emo-

tional support Consequently, in negotiating a

consensual view of their health dilemmas, such

individuals must accommodate their audiences’

emotional needs to distance themselves from

similar fates When faced with people who have

experienced health calamities, for example,

ex-ternal audiences often experience vicarious

threat (Silver, Wortman, & Crofton, 1990) and

engage in defensive attributional distortions

(e.g., the victim deserved what he or she got) in

order to preserve their beliefs that they can

avoid similar fates (Shaver, 1970) In such

con-texts, individuals who blame themselves for

their suffering not only may bolster their own

sense of control but they also honor their fellow

travelers’ need to feel in control of their own

destinies

According to the literature on social reactions

to victimization, however, self-blame

some-times may disrupt rather than sustain ties to

important social support resources Compared

with those who are not seen as responsible,

suf-ferers who are seen as responsible for their

con-ditions may experience more negative social

re-actions (Herbert & Dunkel-Schetter, 1992)

Indeed, this double-edged quality of self-blame

may partially account for the inconsistent

re-lationship that has sometimes been observed

be-tween self-blame and adaptation (Bulman &

Wortman, 1977) It also may help explain why

attributions regarding initial causation appear to

fade in relevance to sufferers as other factors

such as friends and material resources increase

in importance over time (Schulz & Decker,

1985) In effect, it appears that people shift from

negotiating a relationship with an initial trauma

(or diagnosis) to negotiating a relationship with

ongoing demands of living that require the

in-dividual to sustain or strengthen ties to the

community This, in turn, requires sufferers to

negotiate meanings (valences) related to their

disorders that acknowledge the needs of those

important others in the social environment

The idea that finding positive meaning in

suf-fering may have long-term emotional or coping

benefits is not new The Greek philosopher

Ep-ictetus (ca a.d 60–120), for example, wrote that

people are less disturbed by things than by their

views of those things More recently, benefit

finding has been shown to aid in coping with

such problems as myocardial infarction (Affleck,

Tennen, Croog, & Levine, 1987), amputation

(Dunn, 1996), breast cancer (Taylor, Lichtman,

& Wood, 1984), and rheumatoid arthritis

(Ten-nen, Affleck, Urrows, Higgins, & Mendola,

1992; also see Tennen & Affleck, this volume;Nolen-Hoeksema & Davis, this volume.) Hig-gins and Leibowitz (1999) speculate that suchbenefit finding (valence negotiation) may aidcoping by securing the sufferer’s access to socialsupport resources

Economic models of social support are based

on the equitable exchange of resources Ill ordisabled individuals often are likely to be in-volved in objectively inequitable exchanges, andyet they frequently continue to elicit social sup-port (Antonucci & Jackson, 1990) Higgins andLeibowitz (1999) argued that a reality negotia-tion perspective may help explain such findings

by implicating ways in which the ill or disabled

are positioned to contribute to relationships.

These authors suggested “that those (ostensibly

individual) coping strategies that aid adaptation

via maintaining access to social support sources are those that also address the needs ofthe support providers and, therefore, form asort of currency of exchange” (p 36) One need

re-of social support providers, re-of course, is to beperceived as being helpful or supportive Ac-cordingly, Silver et al (1990) observed thathelpers who are not rewarded by improvement

in those they are helping react negatively andwithdraw Among physically ill or disabled in-dividuals, it is those who negotiate a view oftheir helper’s efforts as “helpful” who are likely

to receive continuing support

Yet another need of social support providers

is to have their own personal illusions of controlaffirmed A sufferer’s self-blame, for example,may bolster the audience’s sense of being incontrol of its own fate Similarly, through find-ing such benefits as meaning, spiritual enlight-enment, or renewed purpose in their suffering,ill or disabled individuals may detoxify the au-dience’s assessment of the patients’ condition.Thus, the social audience’s anxieties about itsown vulnerability are alleviated In effect, thereality negotiation perspective suggests thatsufferers preserve their access to social supportresources by engaging in a series of transactionsthat lead to a more positive (or more benign)view of the sufferer’s reality

There are, of course, limits on the extent towhich a sufferer may benefit through strikingsuch “bargains.” Those limits illustrate thesometimes delicate balance being sought in ne-gotiating a consensual view of reality Suffererswho convey either too little or too much dis-tress are likely to lose social support Schreursand de Ridder (1997), for example, argued that

both “good” and “bad” copers experience

re-duced support For good copers, the reduction

stems from insufficient communication of need

For bad copers, the reduction stems from the

support providers’ overwhelming experience of

vicarious threat and feelings of helplessness at

being unable to alleviate the target’s suffering

Optimal levels of social support, in this view of

things, are bestowed upon “balanced” copers

It is noteworthy that such social support

dy-namics also are played out in professional

help-ing relationships In a discussion of reality

ne-gotiation within nursing settings, for example,

Ersek (1992) addressed problems that arise

when seriously ill patients hold unrealistically

hopeful beliefs about their conditions In

es-sence, Ersek described a process of professional

nurses becoming alienated from their patients

when the patients are unwilling to adopt a

“re-alistic” (from the nurses’ perspective) outlook

on their illnesses In fact, Ersek argues that, in

order to maintain nurses’ ability to continue

providing effective and professional services in

such cases, it may be critical for health care

in-stitutions to step in and endorse the nurses’

view of their patients’ reality The institutions,

in such instances, serve as surrogates for the

patients in the negotiation of a reality that

en-ables the nurses to maintain their equilibrium

in a helping role

Reality Negotiation and

Professional Accountability

Ersek’s comments about professional nurses do

more than simply illustrate the social forces that

rein in intemperate views and the social

disrup-tions that attend failures to achieve an

accom-modation of perspectives They also raise issues

at the growing edge of the reality negotiation

construct Are there limits, other than those

im-posed by the physical laws of nature, on the

extent to which “reality” can or should be

so-cially constructed? (The reader is encouraged to

see Baumeister [1989] for some thoughtful

ob-servations concerning a related question.) A

sec-ond question, and the one of primary interest

here, is what is the proper role of health

pro-fessionals in guiding or constraining their

cli-ents’ construing? Health care providers may be

uniquely positioned to promote integration,

growth, and maturation through self-theory

changes in their clients Conversely, they may

be uniquely positioned to promote harmful

changes In view of the thesis that social ences are influential protagonists in reality ne-gotiations, it follows that professional helpersoperate under powerful ethical and moral im-peratives The focus of the present section will

audi-be on presenting a reality negotiation tive on professional accountability within thoseuniquely formal yet intimate relationships inwhich the objective is for one individual to helpanother to change

perspec-A logical place to focus a discussion of fessional accountability in reality negotiation is

pro-on those psychotherapy approaches that arerooted in constructivist philosophy All psycho-therapeutic relationships involve reality nego-tiation, and constructivist therapies have beenpracticed since early in the 20th century (Adler,1912) The past two decades, however, haveseen a particularly active development of ap-proaches that are direct outgrowths of construc-tivist perspectives Neimeyer and Stewart(2000), in their overview of such therapies, de-fine psychotherapy, from a constructivist per-spective, “as the variegated and subtle inter-

change and negotiation of (inter)personal

meanings in the service of articulating, rating, and revising those constructions that theclient uses to organize her or his experience andactions” (p 341, emphasis added) One can eas-ily interpolate into this definition the machi-nations of the linkage-valence matrix whereinthe individual works to recast his or her rela-tionship to elements that lie both within andwithout the self

elabo-None of the various “schools” of therapy is immune to unethical or incompetentpractitioners To a considerable extent, however,each school may be said to be uniquely vulner-able precisely in those areas it defines as critical

psycho-to its expert execution Approaches that rely ontherapists’ interpretative divination would ap-pear to be especially vulnerable to diviners ofunreliable or invalid interpretations Ap-proaches that cast the therapist as a “medical”practitioner whose principal task is to diagnose

“mental illnesses” and apply appropriate cal treatments to them are vulnerable to bothunskilled diagnosticians and the inadequacies ofour current nosology of mental disorders (seeMaddux, this volume) Approaches that purport

medi-to assist others in negotiating new and moreliberating constructions of themselves and theirworlds are especially vulnerable to the consciousand unconscious biases of their practitioners.They also are subject to criticisms that their ef-

fectiveness is difficult to establish using

scien-tific methods because the outcomes of their

treatments are so idiosyncratic

One does not have to search far to find

evi-dence that subtle therapist bias and suggestion

can profoundly influence clients’ sense of self,

as well as their view of external reality

Nich-olas Spanos, for example, within the context of

hypnotic regression research, found that simple

statements that reincarnation was scientifically

defensible led participants to believe more

strongly in the past-life identities they

subse-quently enacted than did participants who were

told that past-life identities were merely

inter-esting fantasies (Spanos, Menary, Gabora,

DuBreuil, & Dewhirst, 1991) Spanos also

dem-onstrated that subtle suggestions embedded

within simulated “hypnotic” interviews

rou-tinely resulted in the emergence of alter

iden-tities similar to those associated with multiple

personality disorder (MPD; Spanos, Weekes,

Menary, & Bertrand, 1986) Kohlenberg (1973)

demonstrated that personality alters in a

clini-cal case of MPD waxed and waned depending

on the amount of attention they were given

Add to this documented cases of iatrogenic

MPD (e.g., Belluck, 1997) and the well-known

problem of false memories associated with

therapeutic suggestion (Loftus & Ketcham,

1994), and there is ample reason for

construc-tivist or “narrative” therapists to carefully

monitor their role in the (co)authorship of

their clients’ realities

Although negotiated “realities” that

pur-port to explain physical or emotional

symp-toms by invoking satanic ritual abuse or

unre-solved difficulties from previous existences are

dramatic and, thankfully, relatively

uncom-mon, they do occur Moreover, from a

con-structivist perspective, it must be acknowledged

that these, as well as the vast array of more

mundane and commonplace therapeutic

resolu-tions, are but a sampling of the available

pos-sibilities According to Neimeyer and Stewart

(2000), fruitful therapeutic encounters must

entail the development of a shared

epistemol-ogy that is unique to the relationship and “is

irreducible to the individual systems of either

partner in the therapeutic relationship”

(p 342) This posture bespeaks an absence of

external guidelines for judging the success of

psychotherapy and poses a daunting challenge

for constructivist therapists to establish

stan-dards of accountability within their relativistic

framework

New Directions

Throughout this chapter, the emphasis has been

on expanding the scope of the reality tion construct beyond the intrapersonal level toinclude interpersonal and intergroup vantagepoints In keeping with this expansive motif,this discussion of new directions will highlightsocietal and cultural perspectives This seems anatural progression, given the current volume’scommitment to articulating a positive vision ofpsychology to contrast with the more tradi-tional deficit, weakness, or illness models that

negotia-so often dominate the psychological and, cially, psychiatric landscapes (see Maddux, thisvolume) The central question to be raised inthis final section is this: Would the evolution ofour culture into one committed to the principles

espe-of secular humanism, and the correspondingevolution of the science of psychology into onecommitted to the positive pursuit of human po-tential (see Seligman, this volume) bring fun-damental changes to the dynamics of reality ne-gotiations between individuals and the agents ofsociety?

Freudianism, with its emphasis on scious, antisocial instincts, and Judeo-Christiantheology, with its emphasis on the inherent(original) sinfulness of humanity, have beendominant influences in shaping American cul-ture and Western thinking about human na-ture Despite the fundamental antipathy ofthese two traditions on some levels, they share

uncon-an underlying pessimism about the ability ofpeople to transcend their (presumed) base na-ture For one, “salvation” entails coming toterms with the onerous truth For the other, itcomes only through divine forgiveness Biolog-ical psychiatry, another major player in theAmerican cultural scene, also has located thesource of human difficulties within the individ-ual in the form of illnesses or disorders Here,too, the individual is essentially helpless to riseabove his or her (biomechanical) essence, andsalvation comes in the form of “medical” inter-ventions (e.g., drugs)

Together, these (and related) traditionshave promulgated a Western worldview thatlargely explains social and emotional difficulties

by emphasizing the flaws or deficits within

people Stated in terms that are consonant withthe aims of this chapter, these traditions havenegotiated a view of reality that locates thecauses of social and personal ills within themost negatively affected individuals Higgins

and Snyder (1989) discussed the seductive pull

such a worldview has on individuals who

are confronted with chronic failure or

diffi-culty in measuring up to accepted standards

of performance Acquiescing to the illness

model of their problem, for example, absolves

them of any intentional shortcoming and

largely avoids attributions to basic competence

On the other hand, it may entail accepting

en-during psychiatric labels and, possibly, some

loss of freedom A related consequence is that

society is largely excused from any need to

reform.

Framed within the terms associated with the

linkage-valence matrix described previously, as

long as the dominant worldview identifies the

source of social or personal disruptions as

de-fects or flaws within people, the emphasis will

be on individuals’ attempting to distance

(un-link) themselves from negative outcomes, with

“society” passing judgment on their efforts

The question posed at the beginning of this

section, however, was whether a culture and a

science of psychology committed to the

princi-ples of secular humanism would bring

funda-mental changes to the dynamics of reality

ne-gotiations between individuals and the agents

of society

Logic would suggest that a view of people

as inherently positive and capable of

self-realization would necessarily alter the dynamics

of reality negotiations Negotiations around

how social disruptions or individual failings

were to be viewed, for example, would tend not

to focus primarily on troublesome dispositional

elements within human nature Rather, the

ne-gotiations would most likely begin with the

un-derlying assumption that there are elements

within culture, society, specific situations, or the

individuals’ learning histories that constrained

them from effectively or adequately

manifest-ing their positive natures It should be noted

that these are the very views of reality that

in-dividuals operating within the existing

world-view typically seek to negotiate when

con-fronted with their authorship of negative

outcomes In this latter context, they are the

sought-after end points of reality negotiations

aimed at excusing flaws Within the former

con-text of a worldview dominated by a positive

view of people, however, such understandings

would form the foundation for reality

negotia-tions that aim at identifying strengths and

building upon assets

In language that is grounded in the reality

negotiation linkage-valence matrix, a cultureand psychology committed to a positive view ofpeople and to a belief in their capacity for self-realization would tilt the reality negotiationprocess more in the direction of “hoping” andaway from excusing In other words, the focuswould shift away from unlinking people fromnegative outcomes toward linking them to pos-itive goals (see Snyder, Rand, & Sigmon, thisvolume) The “balance of power” between so-ciety and individuals would not change in thesense that both would remain fundamental tothe process of generating a consensual view ofevents and of the world People would, however,largely be freed from efforts to maintain theirintegrity in the face of challenges to their being

“good and in-control,” and a need for societal

as opposed to individual reforms would be more likely to emerge from the negotiations Cer-

tainly, an underlying belief in the positive ture of people would facilitate the likelihood oftheir self-realization The positive psychologymovement is a helpful force in advancing thenegotiations in this direction

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