How Socrates inspired Rangers' motivational T-shirt sloganPublished in:Fort Worth Star-Telegram (TX), Feb 21, 2017,Points of View Reference SourceBy:Stevenson, StefanStevenson, Stefan How Socrates inspired Rangers' motivational T-shirt slogan ~~~~~~~~ Stefan Stevenson Feb. 21--SURPRISE, Ariz. -- Before the Texas Rangers opened their first full squad workout of spring training Tuesday morning, manager Jeff Banister held his annual team meeting with players, coaches and support staff. Besides introducing faces to the new players in the major league clubhouse, Banister reminded the players of the meaning of the '86400' and 'The Game Knows' slogans on the front and back of the workout shirts he had made up. The front of the shirts read simply: "86400." "The Game Knows" runs across the back. 86,400 Seconds in a day, which Rangers' manager Jeff Banister hopes inspires his players to make them all count. There are 86,400 seconds in a day, Banister said, and "They go by very quickly. Don't waste any of them." "Very simple message," said Banister, who nevertheless invoked Socrates' famous quote "An unexamined life is not worth living" as inspiration. "Socrates talked about evaluating and reflecting on your own life and where you've been and how you take inventory," he said. "I thought about how do we take inventory on what we do each day. It's a lot of seconds but they go by very fast but how are you preparing and utilizing them on a daily basis to play a game that you're very skilled at?" The message on the back, "The Game Knows," is a reminder to the players that they're "all in this game together." "It's a reflection of how you play is what you put into it," Banister said. "It's just a reminder that great teammates challenge each other and they lead by example. Our guys are great at that. They prepare extremely well, they work hard." It's just a reminder that great teammates challenge each other and they lead by example. Our guys are great at that. Rangers' Jeff Banister on T-shirt slogan Banister's message also included a reminder to his players that spring is about baby steps. "We didn't' say this was go time. Go time is when you get the flyovers and you're standing on the foul lines and the stands are full," he said. That's go time. Right now, it's get ready time and get better time." He also reminded them of a mission unaccomplished. "The reality is we haven't completed our ultimate mission. That will always be the goal for us. But we can't do that today, we can't complete it today," he said. "If you're a team that looks back on what you've done in the past you don't really pay attention to what's right in front of you." Stefan Stevenson: 817-390-7760, @StevensonFWST ___ (c)2017 the Fort Worth Star-Telegram Visit the Fort Worth Star-Telegram at www.star-telegram.com Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Copyright of Fort Worth Star-Telegram (TX) is the property of Fort Worth Star-Telegram (TX). The copyright in an individual article may be maintained by the author in certain cases. Content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. Source: Fort Worth Star-Telegram (TX), Feb 21, 2017 Item: 2W6689243756

Kennedy, David. "Child and Fool in the Western Wisdom Tradition." Thinking, 1994. ProQuest; SIRS Issues Researcher, https://explore.proquest.com/sirsissuesresearcher/document/2250096253?accountid=194618.

The Twentieth Century Until relatively recently in modern times, it was hoped that confident elimination of what could be ascribed purely to Socrates would leave standing a coherent set of doctrines attributable to Plato (who appears nowhere in the dialogues as a speaker). Many philosophers, inspired by the nineteenth century scholar Eduard Zeller, expect the greatest philosophers to promote grand, impenetrable schemes. Nothing of the sort was possible for Socrates, so it remained for Plato to be assigned all the positive doctrines that could be extracted from the dialogues. In the latter half of the twentieth century, however, there was a resurgence of interest in who Socrates was and what his own views and methods were. The result is a narrower, but no less contentious, Socratic problem. Two strands of interpretation dominated views of Socrates in the twentieth century (Griswold 2001; Klagge and Smith 1992). Although there has been some healthy cross-pollination and growth since the mid 1990s, the two were so hostile to one another for so long that the bulk of the secondary literature on Socrates, including translations peculiar to each, still divides into two camps, hardly reading one another: literary contextualists and analysts. The literary-contextual study of Socrates, like hermeneutics more generally, uses the tools of literary criticism—typically interpreting one complete dialogue at a time; its European origins are traced to Heidegger and earlier to Nietzsche and Kierkegaard. The analytic study of Socrates, like analytic philosophy more generally, is fueled by the arguments in the texts—typically addressing a single argument or set of arguments, whether in a single text or across texts; its origins are in the Anglo-American philosophical tradition. Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900–2002) was the doyen of the hermeneutic strand, and Gregory Vlastos (1907–1991) of the analytic.

Is the unlogged life worth living?Published in:New Scientist, 1/11/2014,Academic Search Complete Is the unlogged life worth living?  LEADERS "THE unexamined life is not worth living," Socrates said at his trial in 399 BC. The philosopher, dubbed "the gadfly of Athens", had made himself unpopular with his fellow citizens by questioning what he saw as their unthinking pursuit of power and pleasure. Socrates had grand issues of morality, justice and democracy in mind as he spoke, but over the millennia his words have been interpreted as a more general plea to consider carefully the choices we make. In recent years, technological advances have enabled us to examine our lives in minute detail. Lifelogging -- the recording of our every step and second -- has evolved from the preserve of obsessives to a pursuit for enthusiasts. Soon it will be a pastime open to anyone: even our dogs (see page 19). So far, our ability to capture every moment has outstripped our ability to categorise and assess the data, and applications have been restricted to tracking diet and exercise. But sophisticated new tools are on the way. The ability to sort memories by mood, for example, could help us analyse past experiences in order to lead more fulfilled lives. That's the idea, anyway. But many will dismiss lifelogging as navel-gazing or control freakery. Socrates's peers were unimpressed by his argument: they put him to death by hemlock. We'll have to see if, 2400 years later, it finds a more receptive audience -- or if its time is still to come. Copyright of New Scientist is the property of New Scientist Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.

The Examined Life is Wise Living: The Relationship Between Mindfulness, Wisdom, and the Moral Foundations.Published in:Journal of Adult Development, Dec2020,Academic Search CompleteBy:Verhaeghen, PaulVerhaeghen, Paul The Examined Life is Wise Living: The Relationship Between Mindfulness, Wisdom, and the Moral Foundations  This correlational study of two independent samples (260 college students and 173 Mechanical Turk workers aged 21–74) examined whether and how mindfulness (broadly construed as a manifold of self-awareness, self-regulation, and self-transcendence), influences wisdom about the self (Adult Self-Transcendence Inventory and Self-Assessed Wisdom Scale) and wisdom about the (social) world (Three-Dimensional Wisdom Scale), and how mindfulness and wisdom impact ethical sensitivities (the five moral foundations). Mindfulness predicted wisdom about the self, and wisdom about the self was linked to an emphasis on the individualizing moral foundations of care/harm avoidance and fairness and, to a lesser degree, on the binding moral foundations of loyalty, authority, and purity. Wisdom about the (social) world was not associated with either mindfulness or the moral foundations. Age was a significant positive predictor for wisdom about the self once the self-awareness component of mindfulness was taken into account. Keywords: Wisdom; Mindfulness; Moral foundations; Ethics This paper investigates the links between trait mindfulness, wisdom, and ethical sensitivities (operationalized as sensitivity to the five moral foundations) in two independent samples, one of college students and one of adults spanning ages 21–74. Two principal ideas guided the study. The first idea is that wisdom, whether one conceptualizes it as a form of expertise or as a virtue or personality characteristic, might be well served by the specific quality or qualities of attention the individual brings to their experiences. It makes sense to expect that a habitual mindful attitude (i.e., taking an open, non-judgmental, reflective, self-regulatory, and sometimes self-transcendent stance towards life) might be a good indicator or exemplifier of such qualities. The second idea is that most, if not all, current adult-developmental theories consider wisdom to be of practical consequence, in the sense that wise people are expected to generally display prosocial attitudes and behavior (for a review, see Bangen et al. [10]). Consequentially, one might expect this wise stance to give rise to ethical sensitivities that are compatible with the characteristics of wisdom (as defined within these theories). Wisdom It is probably fair to say that within the field of psychology the study of wisdom started from an adult development perspective (e.g., Clayton and Birren [20]; Erikson [26]; Kramer [44]; Pascual-Leone [54]). Initial conceptualizations tended to view wisdom primarily from a cognitive angle, that is, as an advanced form of postformal thought. For instance, Baltes and Staudinger ([ 9 ]) define wisdom as 'expertise in the conduct and meaning of life' (p. 124). In this approach, wisdom is conceptualized as a form of crystallized intelligence, more specifically 'expert knowledge in the fundamental pragmatics of life that permits exceptional insight, judgment, and advice about complex and uncertain matters' (Pasupathi et al. [56], p. 351). Other approaches—Glück and Bluck ([31]) label these 'integrative views'—have supplemented this cognitive view by additionally emphasizing the reflective, affective, and conative qualities of the wise person, making wisdom more akin to a personality characteristic or a virtue (e.g., Ardelt [ 3 ]; Mitchell et al. [52])—wisdom as 'personal, concrete, applied, and involved' (Ardelt [ 3 ], p. 262). The different conceptualizations of wisdom do have a common core. From a review of 24 different key theories or definitions of wisdom, Bangen et al. ([10]) concluded that five subcomponents were present in at least half of the papers: (a) social decision making and pragmatic knowledge of life; (b) prosocial attitudes and values; (c) reflection and self-understanding (including a desire to learn); (d) acknowledgement of and coping with uncertainty; and (e) emotional homeostasis. Although there are qualitative, performance-based measures of wisdom, such as the Berlin wisdom paradigm (Baltes and Smith [ 8 ]), where participants describe how they would solve a particular life problem and answers are scored along a series of dimensions, self-report measures were used here, simply because quantitative measures allow for more efficient data collection and scoring, which in turn allows to query a larger sample of respondents. Specifically, I used the three quantitative self-report measures for wisdom recommended by Glück ([30]), Glück et al. ([34]), and Staudinger and Glück ([64])—Ardelt's Three-Dimensional Wisdom Scale (3D-WS; [ 2 ]), Levenson's Adult Self-Transcendence Inventory (ASTI; Levenson et al. [47]), and Webster's Self-Assessed Wisdom Scale (SAWS; [71], [72]). These three scales have different emphases. The 3D-WS measures wisdom as the integration of cognitive, reflective, and affective/compassionate personal characteristics; the SAWS gauges five dimensions, namely critical life experience, emotional regulation, reminiscence and reflectiveness, humor, and openness; the ASTI taps into self-transcendent wisdom, defined as a self-expansive process entailing decreased self-concern and increased empathy, understanding, spirituality, and feelings of connectedness with past and future generations. Not all of these scales cover all five subcomponents mentioned above: Arguably, the 3D-WS does; the SAWS covers social decision making, self-reflection, and emotional homeostasis; and the ASTI includes items about prosocial attitudes, self-reflection, and emotional homeostasis. Glück et al. ([34]) and Staudinger and Glück ([64]) additionally make a distinction between personal and general wisdom. The former refers to a person's insight into themselves and their own lives; the latter to insights into life and the world in general. The assumption is that personal wisdom is obtained through actual personal experience, whereas general wisdom does not have personal experience as a necessary condition. In Glück's conceptualization, all three scales mentioned above measure personal wisdom; only performance-based measures tap into general wisdom. Glück et al. ([34]) also posit a third, often underappreciated facet of wisdom, namely other-related wisdom, which they define as 'an empathy-based caring concern for both concrete other people and humankind at large' (p. 5); it is most evident in two of the three 3D-WS scales, namely the cognitive and reflective scales, and is possibly a subcomponent of personal wisdom. In (partial) confirmation of this view, Glück et al. found that all three 3D-WS scales loaded on a different factor than the two other quantitative scales. Given that the cognitive scale of the 3D-WS contains items that are indeed about the other (e.g., 'People are either good or bad' and 'You can classify almost all people as either honest or crooked'—both items are reverse-scored), but also items that are often general and external (e.g., 'ignorance is bliss' and 'It is better not to know too much about things that cannot be changed'—both items are reverse-scored), it seems to us that this dimension could be labeled more accurately as 'wisdom about the (social) world', in contrast with the 'wisdom about the self' tapped in personal-wisdom scales. Mindfulness Mindfulness is often defined as a particular way of paying attention—the ability or propensity to engage in "nonelaborative, non-judgmental, present-centered awareness in which each thought, feeling, or sensation that arises in the attentional field is acknowledged" (Bishop et al. [12], p. 232); this awareness requires cultivation (Nilsson and Kazemi [53]). One corollary is that "thought or events are observed as events in the mind without over-identifying with them and without reacting to them in an automatic, habitual pattern of reactivity", thus "introducing a 'space' between one's perception and response" and allowing one "to respond to situations more reflectively (as opposed to reflexively)" (Bishop et al. [12], p. 232). Mindfulness has been found to be broadly beneficial to the individual—mindfulness interventions lead to positive outcomes regarding stress, well-being, anxiety, depression, negative emotions, emotion regulation, rumination, self-compassion, and empathy (Eberth and Sedlmeier [25]; Verhaeghen [68]). These relationships are at least partially causal: changes in dispositional mindfulness after meditation training correlate with changes in self-perceived stress, anxiety, depressed mood, positive affect, negative affect, rumination, and general well-being (Gu et al. [40]; Khoury et al. [43]). Recent theoretical work within the field has converged on the conclusion that mindfulness is a complex concept, more akin to a manifold (or even a cascade of processes) than to a singular construct. The starting point of this work has been an examination of the reasons why mindfulness interventions lead to such a wide array of positive outcomes. Many models have been advanced to explain the translation of mindfulness into positive outcomes (e.g., Baer [ 5 ]; Brown et al. [16]; Chiesa et al. [19]; Creswell and Lindsay [21]; Grabovac et al. [35]; Hölzel et al. [42]; Segal et al. [59]; Shapiro et al. [60]; Vago and Silbersweig [67]), each with their own emphases and levels of complexity. Although details of the different proposed models vary, the list of proposed mechanisms generally contains three categories, as Vago and Silbersweig ([67]) point out. A first proposed mechanism is a change in self-awareness. This involves recognizing automatic habits and automatic patterns of reactivity, as well as an increased awareness of momentary states of body and mind—what is typically meant by mindfulness. A second proposed mechanism is a change in self-regulation. This includes better regulation of emotions, heightened self-compassion, increased emotional and cognitive flexibility, decreased rumination and worry, and increased nonattachment and acceptance. A final proposed mechanism is increased self-transcendence . This implies increased decentering, a stronger awareness of interdependence between self and others, and heightened compassion. Vago and Silbersweig label this common-denominator model the S-ART model, after its three components: self-awareness, self-regulation, and self-transcendence. Our own empirical work on the subject (Verhaeghen [69]; Verhaeghen and Aikman [70]), based on exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis as well as structural equation modeling on 3 independent samples of about 300 subjects each has indeed confirmed the plausibility of this S-ART mindfulness manifold, suggesting a flow of influence from self-awareness over self-regulation to self-transcendence, and then outward to well-being and other aspects of psychological health (for a schematic representation, see Fig. 1). Factor analysis showed that additional subdivisions were present within the components of self-awareness and self-regulation: self-awareness incorporated reflective awareness (the more active, deliberate, probing aspect of mindfulness) and controlled sense-of-self in the moment (the more passive, equanimous, non-judgmental aspect of mindfulness) (for more details on these components and how they are measured, see the "Methods" section below); self-regulation was tapped by (the opposite of) self-preoccupation and by self-compassion. Graph: Fig. 1 The S-ART mindfulness manifold as obtained in Verhaeghen ([69]) Mindfulness and Wisdom There are obvious points of contact between this conceptualization of mindfulness and those of wisdom, suggesting they operate in the same nomological space. First, some of the common-core wisdom subcomponents align with the mindfulness manifold. Clearly, the reflection and self-understanding subcomponent of common-core wisdom has a natural affinity (if not identity) with the reflective awareness component in the mindfulness manifold. A few examples from specific theories illustrate this quite nicely. For instance, Ardelt ([ 3 ]) explicitly claims that '[t]he development of wisdom requires the transcendence of one's subjectivity and projections, which can be accomplished through self-examination, self-awareness, and a reflection on one's own behavior and one's interactions with others' (p. 269). Likewise, Glück and Bluck's ([32]) MORE (mastery, openness, reflectivity, and emotion regulation) model of wisdom posits that wisdom-related knowledge develops through an interaction of life experiences with the four MORE resources, and that therefore wisdom should manifest itself in how people reflect upon past experiences. As a third example, Brown and Greene's model of Wisdom Development ([14]) states that wisdom ripens when individuals go through a core 'learning-from-life' process, comprised of reflection, integration, and application. Pascual-Leone ([55]), as a final example, considers meditation (one possible cultivator of mindfulness) as a path towards wisdom, through its fostering of insight, self-insight, and self-transcendence. Second, emotional homeostasis can be understood as an aspect or outcome of self-regulation. Third, some wisdom researchers explicitly view self-transcendence as a critical component of wisdom (see the Ardelt quote above; also Curnow [22]; Levenson [46]). There are a few empirical indications of a mindfulness-wisdom link as well. One study (Brienza et al. [13]) used its own process-based measure of wisdom, and found correlations with mindfulness scales, especially observing and orienting. Two studies used a training approach to foster wisdom by incorporating mindfulness either explicitly (Sharma and Dewangan [61]) or implicitly (as reflective awareness through a self-reflection journal and a life experience journal; Bruya and Ardelt [17]). The former study did not find intervention effects on either mindfulness or wisdom, but did find significant correlations at pretest between mindfulness (measured by the Mindful Attention Awareness Scale, MAAS; Brown and Ryan [15]) and the affective and reflective components of wisdom. The latter study obtained an intervention effect of the reflective exercises over and beyond those of attending a cognitively oriented class on wisdom, but did not include a measure of mindfulness to verify the proximal cause of the effect. These intervention studies, then, are somewhat suggestive of (but far from definitive about) a positive relationship between mindfulness and wisdom. Wisdom and Ethical Sensitivities The psychological study of ethical sensitivities and attitudes (e.g., Greene [37]; Haidt [41]) has converged on the conclusion that ethical actions are not always the product of the careful application of rational thought, but instead tend to be largely (although not exclusively) based on intuitions—evolved, automatic responses, inaccessible to awareness, which sometimes operate in contradiction with logical constraints. Researchers in this field often consider the vessels for these intuitions to be innate—for instance, Haidt's Moral Foundations Theory (MFT; Graham et al. [36]) posits that ethical sensitivities ultimately boil down to the five dimensions of promoting care/avoiding harm, fairness, ingroup loyalty, (respect for) authority, and purity (or sanctity). The former two are often combined into an 'individualizing' foundation, because they focus on the provision and protection of individual rights; the remaining three into a 'binding' foundation, because they focus on ingroup cohesion. The idea is that every individual is sensitive to these five aspects, but that the intuitions themselves are built through experience, and are thus open to individual and cultural differences through a tuning up or down of the emotional responses due to experiences that fit into these vessels (Flanagan and Williams [28]). In our previous study (Verhaeghen and Aikman [70]), where we adopted the Moral Foundations framework, we found clear links between the mindfulness manifold and ethical sensitivities, which possibly might be mediated through wisdom. Specifically, we found that reflective awareness and self-transcendence were directly related to the individualizing aspects of morality (i.e., an emphasis on care and fairness); only self-transcendence was related to the binding aspects of morality (i.e., an emphasis on loyalty, authority, and sanctity). One reason to suspect that wisdom might play a role in the individualizing foundation stems from its very definition—prosocial attitudes and values are the second most cited key component in Bangen et al.'s ([10]) literature review (21 out of 24 theories or models incorporated this component). A key mechanism may be the self-transcendental character of wisdom, which it has in common with mindfulness. There are empirical reasons to suspect that wisdom is implicated in moral attitudes (for a review of empirical and theoretical links between wisdom and ethics, see Sternberg and Glück [65]). For instance, wisdom has been found to correlate positively with other-oriented values such as well-being of friends, societal engagement, and ecological protection (Kunzmann and Baltes [45]; Webster [73]). Implicit lay theories of wisdom also include value orientations that align, in Haidt's model, with care and fairness (Glück et al. submitted). The Present Study The literature reviewed suggests that mindfulness, wisdom, and ethical sensitivities are related, but the pieces of this puzzle have not yet been fit together. One wide-open question is how the different components of mindfulness, broadly defined as self-awareness, self-regulation, and self-transcendence relate to wisdom; another whether (or how) wisdom might be a mediator translating, and perhaps crystalizing, mindfully experienced events into ethical attitudes. From the literature reviewed above, I expect that all three aspects of mindfulness would be positively related to wisdom. To assess wisdom, I used the three scales most commonly used in quantitative research—the 3D-WS, the ASTI, and the SAWS. After Glück et al. ([34]), I expect that a factor analysis of these measures will yield two dimensions: wisdom about the self (ASTI and SAWS) and wisdom about the (social) world (3D-WS). Given that mindfulness is primarily associated with knowledge of the self, I would expect that the mindfulness-wisdom connection would be stronger for wisdom about the self than for wisdom about the (social) world. Extending our prior work on mindfulness and ethical sensitivities, as well as building on Glück et al. (submitted), I expect that wisdom will be positively connected to the individualizing moral foundations—care and fairness. For the binding foundations—authority, loyalty, and sanctity/purity—the connection is likely less strong. Because wisdom is very often considered an aspect of adult development, I included a group of adults sampled across a large sweep of the adult life span (Sample B, age 25–74), aside from the more usual sample of college students (Sample A). Adding the former sample allows me, first, to check if the results from the first sample replicate, and second, to test whether or not any of the wisdom or ethical components are age-sensitive, as has sometimes been claimed (e.g., Ardelt [ 1 ]; Baltes and Kunzmann [ 7 ]; but see, e.g., Grossmann and Kross [39]; Mickler and Staudinger [51]). Methods Participants Sample A consisted of 260 undergraduate students from the Georgia Institute of Technology, who received course credit in return for their participation. They were invited to participate in a study on 'mindfulness, acceptance, and psychology'. They were aged 18–26 (mean = 19.7, SD = 1.5); 54% were women. Sample B consisted of 173 participants recruited from Mechanical Turk. They were invited to participate in a study on 'mindfulness, acceptance, and psychology', and offered $4 in return for their time. Workers needed to be highly qualified in order to participate—more than 5000 Human Intelligence Tasks (HIT; i.e., surveys or other online tasks) completed to the requesters' satisfaction, and at least 98% of all lifetime HITs approved by the requester. They were aged 21–74 (mean = 39.8, SD = 11.7); 44% were women. The age distribution was as follows: age 21–30: 38 participants; age 31–40: 69 participants; age 41–50: 33 participants; age 51–60: 18 participants; age 61–74: 12 participants. On average, participants had completed 14.9 years of education (SD = 1.9). Although Mechanical Turk is generally considered to be a useful, valid, and reliable tool for behavioral researchers (e.g., Mason and Suri [49]), we found it prudent to assess potential differences in data quality between the two samples. We did this by comparing Cronbach's α values for all subscales (see the "Measures and Procedure" section below for all α values). Sample B (Mechanical Turk) tended to have higher reliability values (median = 0.84, ranging from 0.41 to 0.93) than Sample A (students) (median = 0.71, ranging from 0.48 to 0.90). The correlation between Fisher z -transformed reliability values between the samples was 0.78 (this transformation was applied to linearize the measurement scale), suggesting that both groups were about equally sensitive to differences in the item characteristics that drive reliability. Measures and Procedure Participants filled out all questionnaires online; they took about 45–60 min to complete. Below, questionnaires are grouped thematically; the mindfulness measures (i.e., self-awareness, self-regulation, and self-transcendence) are presented as they resulted from the set of factor analyses (an exploratory analysis on 488 participants, and a confirmatory analysis on an independent sample of 222 participants) in Verhaeghen ([69]); this structure was replicated in Verhaeghen and Aikman ([70]). All measures were collected from both samples. Cronbach's α values reported are the values obtained in the present study, reported separately for Samples A and B, respectively. Note that some scales (notably the subscales of the Self-Compassion Scale) contain a very small number of items, possibly depressing the α values. Control Variables The Mini-IPIP (Donnellan et al. [23]) is a 20-item measurement of the Big Five personality factors , 4 items for each factor: Extraversion (sample item: 'I am the life of the party', Cronbach's α = 0.83 and 0.87), Agreeableness (sample item: 'I sympathize with others' feelings', Cronbach's α = 0.77 and 0.85), Conscientiousness (sample item: 'I get chores done right away', Cronbach's α = 0.68 and 0.78), Openness (which the IPIP labels Intellect/Imagination; sample item: 'I have a vivid imagination', Cronbach's α = 0.71 and 0.84), and Neuroticism (sample item: 'I have frequent mood swings', Cronbach's α = 0.74 and 0.78). Additionally, participants were asked for their age and gender . Social Conservatism Social conservatism was measured via the Social Conservatism subscale (6 items; sample item: 'Please indicate the extent to which you feel positive or negative towards each issue: ... Abortion'; Cronbach's α = 0.62 and 0.69) of the Social and Economic Conservatism Scale (SECS; Everett [27]). Self-awareness Two constructs were assessed within self-awareness. The first, reflective awareness , is the unit-weighted composite of the z -scores of three scales: (a) the Observing subscale of the Five Facets Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ; Baer et al. [ 6 ]) (8 items; sample item: 'When I'm walking, I deliberately notice the sensations of my body moving', Cronbach's α = 0.73 and 0.87); (b) the Reflectiveness subscale of the Broad Rumination Scale (BRS; Trani et al. in preparation) (4 items; sample item: 'It is important for me to understand why I feel a certain way', Cronbach's α = 0.81 and 0.81); and (c) Search for Insight/Wisdom of the Aspects of Spirituality scale (ASP; Büssing et al. [18]) (7 items; sample item: 'I strive for insight and truth', Cronbach's α = 0.84 and. 90). In both samples, the composite was normally distributed, as ascertained via a Kolmogorov–Smirnov test ( p > 0.2). The second construct, controlled sense-of-self in the moment , is the unit-weighted composite of the z -scores of three scales: (a) the Acting with Awareness subscale from the FFMQ (8 items, sample item: the reverse of 'When I'm doing things, my mind wanders off and I'm easily distracted', Cronbach's α = 0.87 and 0.91); (b) the Sense-of-self Scale (SOSS; Flury and Ickes [29]) (12 items, sample item: 'I have a clear and definite sense of who I am and what I'm all about'; Cronbach's α = 0.86 and 0.88); and (c) the Non-judging of inner experience subscale of the FFMQ (8 items, sample item: the reverse of 'I criticize myself for having irrational or inappropriate emotions', Cronbach's α = 0.90 and 0.93). In both samples, the composite was normally distributed, as ascertained via a Kolmogorov–Smirnov test ( p > 0.2). Self-regulation Two constructs were assessed within self-regulation. The first, self-preoccupation , is the unit-weighted composite of the z -scores of two subscales from the BRS, namely Compulsivity (5 items; sample item: 'When I start to worry, it's very hard for me to stop', Cronbach's α = 0.79 and 0.87) and Worrying (3 items; sample item: 'Uncertainty about the future bothers me', Cronbach's α = 0.58 and 0.68), as well as two subscales from the Self-Compassion Scale, Short Form (SCS; Raes et al. [57]), namely Isolation (2 items; sample item: 'When I'm feeling down, I tend to feel like most other people are probably happier than I am', Cronbach's α = 0.56 and 0.63) and Over-Identified (2 items; sample item: 'When I fail at something important to me I become consumed by feelings of inadequacy', Cronbach's α = 0.66 and 0.58). In both samples, the composite was normally distributed, as ascertained via a Kolmogorov–Smirnov test ( p > 0.2). In our previous work, as here, self-preoccupation correlated negatively with other aspects of mindfulness, as one would expect—better self-regulation implies lower, not higher, levels of self-preoccupation. This may be confusing for some readers. Because the construct is, however, measured by scales that tap explicitly into the self-preoccupation aspect, and not its absence or opposite, we preferred to keep the self-preoccupation label. The second, self-compassion , was measured as the unit-weighted composite of the z -scores of three subscales from the SCS, namely Self-Kindness (2 items; sample item: 'I try to be understanding and patient towards those aspects of my personality I don't like', Cronbach's α = 0.61 and 0.60), Common humanity (2 items; sample item: 'I try to see my failings as part of the human condition', Cronbach's α = 0.49 and 0.57), and Mindfulness (2 items; sample item: 'When something painful happens I try to take a balanced view of the situation', Cronbach's α = 0.66 and 0.68), as well as the Decentering subscale of the Experiences Questionnaire (EQ; Fresco et al. 2007) (13 items, sample item: 'I am better able to accept myself as I am'; Cronbach's α = 0.84 and 0.93). The composite was normally distributed in Sample A, Kolmogorov–Smirnov = 0.042, p > 0.2, but not Sample B, Kolmogorov–Smirnov = 0.075, p = 0.034. Self-transcendence Self-transcendence was measured as the unit-weighted composite of the z -scores of 2 subscales from the Dispositional Positive Emotion Scale (DPES; Shiota et al. [62]), namely Joy (6 items; sample item: 'I am an intensely cheerful person', Cronbach's α = 0.84 and 0.90), and Love (6 items; sample item: 'I develop strong feelings of closeness to people easily', Cronbach's α = 0.82 and 0.90), and 1 subscale from the Resilience Scale (RS; Lundman et al. [48]), namely Meaningfulness (7 items, sample item: 'My life has meaning', Cronbach's α = 0.81 and 0.91). The composite was normally distributed in Sample A, Kolmogorov–Smirnov = 0.042, p > 0.2, but not Sample B, Kolmogorov–Smirnov = 0.072, p = 0.046. Moral Foundations This construct was measured using the 5 subscales of the Moral Foundations Questionnaire (Graham et al. [36]): (a) Care/harm (6 items; sample item: 'When you decide whether something is right or wrong, to what extent are the following considerations relevant to your thinking? – Whether or not someone suffered emotionally'; Cronbach's α = 0.52 and 0.76); (b) Fairness (6 items; sample item: '... Whether or not some people were treated differently than others'; Cronbach's α = 0.56 and 0.64); (c) Ingroup loyalty (6 items; sample item: '... Whether or not someone's action showed love for his or her country'; Cronbach's α = 0.48 and 0.84); (d) Authority (6 items; sample item: '... Whether or not someone showed a lack of respect for authority'; Cronbach's α = 0.61 and 0.85); and (e) Purity (6 items; sample item: '... Whether or not someone violated standards of purity and decency'; Cronbach's α = 0.69 and 0.92). Wisdom Scales Participants filled out three self-report wisdom surveys. The Adult Self-Transcendence Inventory (ASTI; Levenson et al. [47]) measures, in the words of the authors, "a decreasing reliance on externals for definition of the self, increasing interiority and spirituality, and a greater sense of connectedness with past and future generations" (p. 127). After factor analysis, Levenson et al. derived a more focused self-transcendence scale, which is used here (Factor 1 of their Table 1; 10 items; sample item: 'My peace of mind is not so easily upset as it used to be'; Cronbach's α = 0.67 and 0.79). The Self-Assessed Wisdom Scale (SAWS; Webster [71]) measures 5 interrelated dimensions of wisdom: experience (8 items; sample item: 'I have experienced many painful events in my life'; Cronbach's α = 0.81 and 0.84), emotions (8 items; sample item: 'I am good at identifying subtle emotions within myself'; Cronbach's α = 0.83 and 0.86), reminiscence (8 items; sample item: 'Reviewing my past helps gain perspective on current concerns'; Cronbach's α = 0.86 and 0.91), openness (8 items; sample item: 'I like to read books which challenge me to think differently about issues'; Cronbach's α = 0.71 and 0.80), and humor (8 items; sample item: 'I can chuckle at personal embarrassments'; Cronbach's α = 0.86 and 0.91). The Three-Dimensional Wisdom Scale (3D-WS; Ardelt [ 2 ]) consists of 3 subscales, tapping the cognitive (14 items, sample item: 'It is better not to know too much about things that cannot be changed'; Cronbach's α = 0.78 and 0.86), reflective (12 items, sample item: 'When I'm upset at someone, I usually try to "put myself in his or her shoes" for a while'; Cronbach's α = 0.55 and 0.54), and affective (13 items, sample item: 'I can be comfortable with all kinds of people'; Cronbach's α = 0.49 and 0.41) components of wisdom. Factor analysis of the nine wisdom scales in both samples; principal axis analysis with oblimin rotation Sample ASample BFactor 1 wisdom about the selfFactor 2 wisdom about the social worldFactor 1 wisdom about the selfFactor 2 wisdom about the social worldASTI (total).67.80SAWS-emotion regulation.72.78SAWS-experience.79.75SAWS-humor.71.77SAWS-openness.65.74SAWS-reminisce-reflect.80.733D-WS-affective.71.803D-WS-cognitive.57.683D-WS-reflective.76.68 N = 260 for Sample A and 173 for Sample B. For legibility reasons, factor loadings below.30 are not represented Measures Collected but Not Included in the Analyses Additionally, participants filled out the Nonattachment Scale (NAS; Sahdra et al. [58]), the Emotional Resilience Scale (ERS; Gross and John [38]); the QUEST scale (Batson and Schoenrade [11]), the Varieties of Inner Speech Questionnaire (VISQ; McCarthy-Jones and Fernyhough [50]), and the Self-Verbalization Scale (SVS; Duncan and Cheyne [24]). Some of those measures were remnants of an earlier (Verhaeghen [69]) attempt at casting a wide net of mindfulness measures; these measures failed to make the final cut after the factor analysis described in that paper (NAS, ERS, and QUEST); others were are not relevant to the present project (VISQ and SVS). Results Factor Analysis of the Wisdom Scales Two exploratory factor analyses (principal axis analysis with oblimin rotation), one for each sample, were conducted on the nine wisdom scales (i.e., the ASTI scale, the three 3D-WS scales and the five SAWS scales). Scale or subscale scores (i.e., not item scores) were the unit of analysis. Eigenvalues and the scree plot suggested a 2-factor solution in both samples. This solution is presented in Table 1; it explains 55% of the variance in Sample A, and 57% of the variance in Sample B. Both analyses converged on the same solution: the ASTI and all the SAWS scales loaded on one factor, and all three 3D-WS scales loaded on another. As mentioned in the introduction, the ASTI and the SAWS scale have in common that they survey wisdom from an intrapersonal perspective, that is, they appear to tap self-knowledge and self-acceptance; the 3D-WS arguably captures skills and wisdom about how to deal with the social world and with external circumstances. Consequently, I will label the first factor wisdom about the self , and the second wisdom about the ( social ) world . The two factors are relatively independent: Their intercorrelation was 0.18 in Sample A and 0.07 in Sample B. Wisdom and the Mindfulness Manifold To examine how the mindfulness manifold is related to self-assessed wisdom, as well as to control for the effects of the set of background variables (personality, age, and gender), hierarchical multiple regression analysis was applied to the data, separated by sample, with the two types of wisdom (wisdom about the self and wisdom about the [social] world) as the final outcome. For these analyses, a unit-weighted composite was constructed from the z -scores for the ASTI and the different SAWS scales to represent wisdom about the self. The unit-weighted composite of the z -scores of the three 3D-WS scales represented wisdom about the (social) world. Both unit-weighted wisdom composites were normally distributed in both samples; highest Kolmogorov–Smirnov = 0.057, p > 0.200. In the first step, the background variables—the five IPIP scales, age, and gender—were entered. The next step added the two self-awareness composites (reflective awareness and controlled sense-of-self in the moment); the step after that the two self-regulation composites (self-preoccupation and self-compassion); the final step added self-transcendence. Pearson correlations between all variables are reported in Table 2; results from the regression analyses in Table 3. Note that in these analyses, self-preoccupation is scored as defined above, that is, higher values indicate higher levels of self-preoccupation, which indicates a low level of self-regulation. Because of the potential conceptual overlap between the mindfulness concept of self-transcendence and wisdom as defined through the ASTI, analyses were rerun after removing the ASTI from the composite measuring wisdom about the self. The wisdom about the self variable and the wisdom about the self variable with the ASTI removed were virtually identical ( r = 0.98 in Sample A and 0.99 in Sample B); the pattern of the regression results was identical (i.e., variables that were significant remained significant and variables that were not remained non-significant). Correlation matrix for the background variables, mindfulness variables, and wisdom factors; Sample A data presented above the diagonal, Sample B below 12345678910111213141516171 IPIP extraversion1.00.29**.01 −.12*.13*.09.10.03.12.22** −.22**.13*.40**.31**.19**.06.062 IPIP agreeableness.25**1.00.17** −.02.25**.18**.03.28**.36**.19**.00.20**.51**.38**.23**.31**.063 IPIP conscientiousness.12.30**1.00 −.16**.05.18**.03.11.09.34** −.11.18**.27**.10 −.02.05.19**4 IPIP neuroticism −.43** −.34** −.36**1.00 −.09 −.04 −.03.24**.08 −.53**.60** −.48** −.34** −.18** −.11.06 −.045 IPIP intellect/imagination.29**.18* −.02 −.20**1.00.07.04 −.15*.35**.08 −.08.07.20**.36**.03.04 −.116 Social conservatism −.04.14.23** −.19* −.111.00 −.05.07.16*.15* −.02.14*.24**.18*.03.11.54**7 Age −.05.13.07 −.08 −.08.30**1.00 −.07.05.03.03 −.02 −.03.03.07 −.03.088 Gender.05 −.31** −.17* −.02.03 −.07 −.21**1.00.04 −.03.21** −.05.13*.05.13*.30**.009 Reflective awareness.22**.34**.26** −.18*.43** −.02 −.12 −.141.00 −.08.22**.23**.35**.60**.15*.37**.23**10 Controlled sense-of-self in the moment.33**.40**.37** −.62**.21**.05.17* −.10.17*1.00 −.54**.42**.43**.22**.14* −.03.0111 Self-preoccupation −.37** −.22** −.23**.57** −.19* −.08 −.17* −.08 −.02 −.56**1.00 −.44** −.27** −.08 −.14*.30**.1112 Self-compassion.06.16* −.07 −.20**.03.05.04 −.04.17* −.01.17*1.00.48**.41**.21**.14*.17**13 Self-transcendence.52**.59**.34** −.66**.16*.26**.04 −.12.43**.54** −.47**.21**1.00.57**.27**.35**.24**14 Wisdom about the self.34**.51**.32** −.47**.40**.10.11 −.14.66**.45** −.28**.22**.68**1.00.28**.41**.26**15 Wisdom about the (social) world.11.06.08 −.08.08 −.05.05 −.06.10.05 −.06.00.11.101.00.18**.1016 Individualizing foundation.09.38**.09 −.13.17* −.08.06 −.15.31**.13 −.02.03.29**.43**.111.00.33**17 Binding foundation −.04.20**.20* −.12 −.20*.77**.13 −.10 −.01 −.02.09.07.31**.16*.01.071.00 N = 260 for Sample A and 173 for Sample B IPIP International Personality Item Pool (https://ipip.ori.org/) * p <.05 Results from hierarchical regression analyses to predict the wisdom factors Step 1Step 2Step 3Step 4Sample ASample BSample ASample BSample ASample BSample ASample BWisdom about the self IPIP extraversion0.19**0.080.16**0.020.17**0.030.11* − 0.06 IPIP agreeableness0.24**0.26**0.080.17**0.060.17** − 0.010.05 IPIP conscientiousness0.010.07* − 0.060.01 − 0.060.03 − 0.080.02 IPIP neuroticism − 0.16** − 0.21** − 0.15** − 0.19** − 0.10 − 0.17* − 0.06 − 0.05 IPIP intellect/imagination0.28**0.31**0.13**0.110.16**0.110.14*0.18** Age − 0.010.08 − 0.020.13* − 0.010.12*0.010.13* Gender0.07 − 0.060.080.010.070.020.050.02 Reflective awareness0.52**0.50**0.46**0.49**0.40**0.38** Controlled sense-of-self in the moment0.15*0.120.120.130.070.09 Self-preoccupation0.04 − 0.010.050.05 Self-compassion0.19**0.060.14*0.03 Self-transcendence0.28**0.41**R2.296.455.506.622.526.625.561.673R2 change.296**.455**.210**.167**.020**.003.035**.048**Wisdom about the (social) world IPIP extraversion0.130.120.100.130.090.130.060.12 IPIP agreeableness0.21** − 0.010.16*0.000.16*0.000.16 − 0.01 IPIP conscientiousness − 0.090.03 − 0.130.04 − 0.120.04 − 0.13*0.04 IPIP neuroticism − 0.17** − 0.02 − 0.13 − 0.08 − 0.07 − 0.09 − 0.05 − 0.08 IPIP intellect/imagination − 0.050.06 − 0.080.06 − 0.080.06 − 0.080.07 Age0.050.040.050.040.060.050.070.05 Gender0.11 − 0.070.10 − 0.070.11 − 0.070.10 − 0.07 Reflective awareness0.110.040.130.040.100.02 Controlled sense-of-self in the moment0.12 − 0.120.07 − 0.110.05 − 0.12 Self-preoccupation − 0.120.03 − 0.110.04 Self-compassion0.03 − 0.000.01 − 0.08 Self-transcendence0.130.06R2.116.033.132.043.140.043.148.044R2 change.116*.033.016.009.008.000.008.001 N = 260 for Sample A and 173 for Sample B IPIP International Personality Item Pool (ipip.ori.org) * p <.05, ** p <.01 Ethical Sensitivity as Consequence of Mindfulness and Wisdom Hierarchical regression was applied to investigate how wisdom and the mindfulness manifold potentially shape ethical sensitivity, operationalized here as the moral foundations. To keep the number of analyses manageable, the two individualizing foundations were collapsed into a single construct by taking the average of the z -scores of the Care/Harm and Fairness scales (the correlation between the two individualizing foundations was 0.50 in Sample A, and 0.57 in Sample B); likewise, a unit-weighted z -score composite was built from the three binding foundations, namely Ingroup loyalty, Authority, and Purity (intercorrelations between the three binding foundations ranged from 0.59 to 0.64 in Sample A, and from 0.63 to 0.78 in Sample B). As is usual (because individuals generally tend to skew towards the ethical side of the distribution), these composites were not normally distributed, Kolmogorov–Smirnov = 0.109, 0.112, 0.139, and 0.073, for individualizing in Samples A and B and binding in sample A and B, respectively, p = 0.000, 0.000, 0.000, and 0.040, respectively. Pearson correlations are reported in Table 2; results from the regression analyses in Table 4. Rerunning the regression analyses with the alternate measure of wisdom about the self, that is, with the ASTI removed, yielded an identical pattern as obtained for the original wisdom about the self concept (i.e., variables that were significant remained significant and variables that were not remained non-significant). Results from hierarchical regression analyses to predict the moral foundations Step 1Step 2Step 3Step 4Step 5Sample ASample BSample ASample BSample ASample BSample ASample BSample ASample BIndividualizing foundation IPIP extraversion − 0.06 − 0.02 − 0.04 − 0.03 − 0.01 − 0.03 − 0.06 − 0.11 − 0.10 − 0.09 IPIP agreeableness0.23**0.34**0.110.33**0.100.34**0.050.25*0.030.23* IPIP conscientiousness0.060.010.01 − 0.02 − 0.00 − 0.04 − 0.03 − 0.040.01 − 0.05 IPIP neuroticism − 0.04 − 0.03 − 0.10 − 0.10 − 0.21* −.16 − 0.17 − 0.07 − 0.17* − 0.05 IPIP intellect/imagination0.15*0.080.040.020.070.020.040.08 − 0.030.03 Social conservatism0.01 − 0.15 − 0.00 − 0.16 − 0.01 − 0.16 − 0.03 − 0.22* − 0.02 − 0.20* Age − 0.060.05 − 0.050.09 − 0.080.11 − 0.060.13 − 0.070.07 Gender0.21** − 0.060.25** − 0.030.21** − 0.030.18* − 0.020.17* − 0.02 Reflective awareness0.33**0.190.22**0.20*0.17*0.110.03 − 0.05 Controlled sense-of-self in the moment − 0.05 − 0.120.05 − 0.110.02 − 0.15 − 0.00 − 0.17 Self-preoccupation0.38**0.100.39**0.170.39**0.13 Self-compassion0.10 − 0.110.04 − 0.15 − 0.01 − 0.15 Self-transcendence0.27**0.35*0.160.17 Wisdom about the self0.42**0.41** Wisdom about the self (ASTI excluded)(NA)(NA) Wisdom about the (social) world0.010.04R2.158.160.233.191.300.202.329.232.404.285R2 stepwise change.158**.160**01,075**.033.067**.011.029**.031*.075**.053**Binding foundation IPIP extraversion − 0.020.030.000.040.030.050.00 − 0.02 − 0.01 − 0.02 IPIP agreeableness − 0.080.09 − 0.120.10 − 0.130.11 − 0.15*0.04 − 0.15*0.03 IPIP conscientiousness0.21**0.030.22**0.040.21**0.020.20**0.030.21**0.02 IPIP neuroticism0.070.07 − 0.020.02 − 0.05 − 0.06 − 0.030.00 − 0.030.02 IPIP intellect/imagination0.02 − 0.10 − 0.03 − 0.10 − 0.01 − 0.11 − 0.02 − 0.06 − 0.06 − 0.09 Social conservatism0.54**0.80**0.54**0.80**0.54**0.80**0.53**0.74**0.53**0.75** Age0.02 − 0.100.02 − 0.110.00 − 0.090.01 − 0.060.01 − 0.09 Gender − 0.13 − 0.04 − 0.10 − 0.05 − 0.13* − 0.03 − 0.14* − 0.02 − 0.14* − 0.02 Reflective awareness0.130.000.040.010.02 − 0.06 − 0.06 − 0.13 Controlled sense-of-self in the moment − 0.15* − 0.08 − 0.12 − 0.06 − 0.13 − 0.09 − 0.15 − 0.10 Self-preoccupation0.21*0.15*0.22**0.20**0.21*0.19** Self-compassion0.14 − 0.090.12 − 0.11*0.09 − 0.12* Self-transcendence0.100.28**0.050.22* Wisdom about the self0.23**0.15 Wisdom about the self (ASTI excluded)(NA)(NA) Wisdom about the (social) world − 0.040.04R2.361.651.391.655.419.668.423.690.447.698R2 stepwise change.361**.651**.030*.004.029*.013.004.024**.023*.008 N = 260 for Sample A and 173 for Sample B IPIP International Personality Item Pool (https://ipip.ori.org/) * p <.05, ** p <.01 Discussion In the present study, I investigated if and how wisdom might be related to dispositional mindfulness, broadly construed as a manifold of self-awareness, self-regulation, and self-transcendence, and if and how it might promote ethical sensitivities. Wisdom was measured using the three self-report surveys most often used in quantitative research on the topic—the 3D-WS, the ASTI, and the SAWS. Two independent samples were included: A sample of college students (Sample A), and one of adult workers on Mechanical Turk with a much wider age range (viz., 21–74; Sample B). The Structure of Wisdom A first expectation (after Glück et al. [34]) was that factor analysis on the subscales of the three surveys would reveal a bifurcation between wisdom about the self (ASTI and SAWS) and wisdom about the (social) world (3D-WS). Factor analysis indeed confirmed this divergence, in both samples. The correlation between the two dimensions was small, 0.18 in Sample A and 0.07 in Sample B, underscoring the relative independence of these two aspects of wisdom. This result replicates that of Glück et al., who obtained a correlation of 0.11. The present study is the first to also show functional independence between the two constructs, in that both types of wisdom have different correlates, as explicated in the next two sections. Predicting Wisdom About the Self From the literature reviewed in the Introduction, I expected that all three aspects of mindfulness—self-awareness, self-regulation, and self-transcendence—would be positively related to wisdom. Regression analysis suggested that this is (partially) true, but only for wisdom about the self. Before I detail these results, note that the background variables explained a fair amount of variance in wisdom about the self: it was negatively related to neuroticism, and positively related to agreeableness and intellect/imagination in both samples, and additionally to extraversion in the college sample and conscientiousness in the Mechanical Turk sample. After taking mindfulness into account, only the influence of intellect/imagination (in both groups) and extraversion (in the college sample) remained significant, but the coefficients were substantially reduced (with β s roughly half of those in Step 1). This suggests that the effects of agreeableness and neuroticism are wholly mediated through the effects of mindfulness, and those of extraversion and intellect/imagination are partially mediated. Levenson et al. ([47]) obtained a negative effect of neuroticism, and a positive effect of openness (i.e., imagination/intellect in this sample), agreeableness, and conscientiousness on the ASTI, a measure of wisdom about the self; only the latter correlation was absent from the present results. Within the Berlin wisdom paradigm, openness to experience is likewise a strong predictor of wisdom scores (e.g., Pasupathi et al. [56]; Staudinger and Glück [64]). This makes sense: if wisdom is at least partially based on experience, an openness to new experiences would be key for its development or flourishing. Crucially, the mindfulness manifold explained an additional 21% to 26% of the variance in wisdom about the self, over and beyond the variance explained by personality, age, and gender. In both samples, one aspect of self-awareness—reflective awareness—was a significant and strong predictor of wisdom about the self, with β values around 0.40 for the final step. The other aspect of self-awareness, however—controlled sense-of-self in the moment—was not a significant predictor (except in Step 2 in the college sample). It appears, then, that wisdom about the self is associated with a reflective stance about one's experiences (i.e., reflective awareness), but not with the experience of being present in the moment (i.e., controlled sense-of-self in the moment)—in other words, it is the examination of or the investigation into one's experiences rather than the mere witnessing of those experiences that is important for this type of wisdom, as many models of wisdom (e.g., Ardelt [ 3 ]; Brown and Greene [14]; Glück and Bluck [31]) indeed explicitly predict. It is interesting to note that self-compassion (at least in the college sample) was an additional predictor for wisdom about the self. The reasons might be that self-compassion allows one to step back from the immediacy of the experience, and consider oneself the way one would consider a friend—this friendly distancing, like the reflection/examination component, might possibly help to foster the transcendence Ardelt ([ 3 ]) considers so necessary for the development of wisdom. Self-preoccupation was not related to wisdom in either sample. One additional link found here was that between self-transcendence and wisdom about the self (with β values on par with or a little lower than those for reflective awareness). This association is almost self-evident, given that quite a few theorists consider self-transcendence to be a critical component of wisdom (Ardelt [ 3 ]; Curnow [22]; Levenson [46]). Note that this relationship remained unchanged when the ASTI, a measure of wisdom the conceptually relies on self-transcendence, was removed from the composite that tapped wisdom about the self, suggesting that the relationship cannot be explained merely by conceptual overlap between the measure of self-transcendence and the ASTI. The role of reflective awareness and self-compassion in wisdom about the self, however, is not merely to foster self-transcendence: the final step in the regression analyses clearly shows that the effects of reflective awareness (both samples) and self-compassion (college sample) are far from completely mediated by self-transcendence. It is also important to stress that the three background variables and the mindfulness manifold provide us with a very good handle on the individual differences in wisdom about the self: they explain a little more than half to two thirds of the variance (between 56 and 67%, to be precise), indicating that these constructs probably should be important components in any realistic theory of wisdom about the self. Predicting Wisdom About the (Social) World Wisdom about the (social) world, in contrast, was not predicted by the mindfulness manifold at all. There is some indication that wisdom about the (social) world might have roots in individual differences in personality instead: individuals scoring higher on agreeableness and lower on neuroticism scored higher on wisdom about the (social) world; however, this was only true in the student sample. As in wisdom about the self, the effects of agreeableness and neuroticism were wholly mediated through the effects of mindfulness, even though the latter effects did not rise to the level of significance. These personality correlates have some face validity in their predictive value. That is, it makes sense that people who are (or want to appear) more friendly, warm, and helpful might be better at picking up on social cues or be more interested in understanding how the social world and the world in general works. Neuroticism, in general, is related to overreactivity, negative emotions, and feeling easily threatened by social situations; none of these qualities would likely be conducive to acquire the type of equanimity associated with wisdom in general (see Wink and Staudinger [74], for a similar argument). Note that Ardelt et al. ([ 4 ]) found that openness and extraversion correlated with the 3D-WS (in a sample of 98 males who were approximately 80 years old); we found such correlations for wisdom about the self, not for wisdom about the (social) world. The reason for the discrepancy is unclear. The reason why the influence of personality variables on wisdom about the (social) world is constrained to the college group is likewise unclear. One potential reason could be adult development: perhaps as people grow older the grip of personality on their outlook on the world loosens. There is a hint of this in the present data: after a median split on the Mechanical Turk sample, the relevant correlations were nominally higher in the younger sample (correlation of wisdom about the [social] world with agreeableness was 0.11, with neuroticism − 0.12) than the older subsample (0.01 and − 0.04, resp.). None of these correlations, however, reached significance. This, then, remains an area for further research. Note that the Mechanical Turk sample was highly educated (about 3 years of college), so educational differences are unlikely to explain the cross-sample differences. Also note that the relationship with personality is much smaller than that observed in wisdom about the self: the background variables (personality, age, and gender) explained 30–46% of the variance in wisdom about the self, versus only 3–12% in wisdom about the (social) world. Wisdom about the (social) world is not only distinct from wisdom about the self; it also seems, with the present measures, much harder to explain. Wisdom and the Moral Foundations Turning now to ethical sensitivity as a potential consequence of mindfulness and wisdom, I found, first, a conceptual (partial) replication of our earlier paper (Verhaeghen and Aikman [70]) on the effects of mindfulness on the moral foundations. In that paper, we found, in two independent samples, that reflective awareness, self-preoccupation, and self-transcendence were related to the individualizing aspects of morality (i.e., an emphasis on care and fairness) (note that the relationship with self-preoccupation was only significant in Sample A in the present study). Self-compassion and self-transcendence were positively related to the binding aspects of morality (i.e., an emphasis on loyalty, authority, and sanctity). In the present data, an additional effect of self-preoccupation on binding was obtained, and the effect of self-compassion on binding was not significantly different from zero in one sample, and, surprisingly, negative in the other. Wisdom about the self turned out to be a strong predictor for the individualizing foundation, that is, one's sensitivity to the ethical dimensions of care and fairness ( β for the final step = 0.42 and 0.41, resp.). In contrast, wisdom about the (social) world had only a negligible and non-significant influence on the individualizing foundation ( β = 0.01 and 0.04). While most theories about wisdom posit an effect on ethics, notably "prosocial attitudes and behaviors, which include empathy, compassion, warmth, altruism, and a sense of fairness" (Bangen et al. [10], p. 1257), the present data suggest that this effect remains restricted to wisdom about the self, and does not extend to wisdom about the (social) world. Within the group of mindfulness variables, the effects of self-awareness on the individualizing foundation were partially mediated through self-transcendence (i.e., the coefficients associated with self-awareness become smaller once self-transcendence enters the equation) and wholly mediated through wisdom about the self (i.e., the coefficients associated with self-awareness became non-significant once the wisdom variables enter the equation, but only wisdom about the self had a reliable effect). The effects of self-transcendence on individualizing, in turn, were fully mediated through wisdom, and particularly wisdom about the self. One possible interpretation of the latter finding is that self-transcendence is a precursor for wisdom about the self; another that self-transcendence as defined here is subsumed under or maybe even synonymous with wisdom about the self. The latter interpretation is certainly compatible with views about wisdom as a form of self-transcendence (Ardelt [ 3 ]; Curnow [22]; Levenson [46]). Whatever the mechanism, wisdom about the self thus appears to foster an increased emphasis on the ethical dimensions of care and fairness, and this is partially due to the influence of reflective awareness and self-transcendence on wisdom about the self. The effects of wisdom on the binding foundations (i.e., an emphasis on authority, ingroup loyalty, and purity) were rather small. The strongest predictor for the binding foundation remained social conservatism, with people who are more conservative showing larger interest in the binding foundation ( β for the final step = 0.53 and 0.75). Wisdom about the self had a much smaller effect ( β for the final step = 0.23 and 0.15; the latter value was ns ); the contribution of wisdom about the (social) world was essentially nil ( β for the final step = − 0.04 and 0.04, ns ). In the college sample, participants who were less agreeable, more conscientious, male, and more self-preoccupied showed a larger interest in the binding foundation. The latter effect replicated for the Mechanical Turk sample, where lower levels of self-compassion and higher levels of self-transcendence were additionally related to a higher interest in binding. If we look at the results that replicate across both samples, the take-away message is that an interest in the binding foundation is determined mostly by social conservatism, and maybe, but to a much smaller extent, by wisdom about the self. This implies a second amendment to the Bangen et al. ([10]) quotation above, to the effect that wisdom's fostering of prosocial attitudes applies mostly to attitudes that make the rights and concerns of others visible (i.e., treating individuals with care and fairness), and less so to attitudes pertaining to ingroup cohesion (i.e., a focus on loyalty, authority, and purity).

"Have We Been Careless with Socrates' Last Words? A Rereading of the Phaedo" by Laurel A. Madison, in Journal of the History of Philosophy (Oct. 2002), Department of Philosophy, Hunter College, 695 Park Ave., New York, N.Y. 10021. If all of Western philosophy is footnotes to Plato, then Socrates' best lines are the epigraphs: "The unexamined life is not worth living." "He is wise who knows he knows not." "All of philosophy is training for death." What to make, then, of his not-so-quoteworthy final words: "Crito, we owe a cock to Asclepius; make this offering to him and do not forget"? This apparent "trivial concern with Crito's unreliable memory," as Madison, a doctoral student at Loyola University, Chicago, puts it, concludes the Phaedo, the last of the trial and execution dialogues, rather oddly. In this beautiful--and frustrating--dialogue, Socrates speaks hopefully about the afterlife, admonishing his friends not to worry about death and explaining why they should even look forward to it. And so, Madison writes, "the sheer banality of Socrates' last words pleads for the reader to search for their deeper significance." In the standard view, Socrates is deep--deeply gloomy. Asclepius is the god of healing; Friedrich Nietzsche thus imagines Socrates moaning, "O Crito, life is a disease," the cock serving as remittance for the cure by death. Most philosophers concur. Socrates always talks up the life of the ascetic. The body hampers the mind and soul with its petty wants, needs, debilities, and imperfections. That the founder of Western philosophy "denigrates our earthly existence and urges us to deny and repress our passions, instincts, desires, and drives" gives many an excuse to write him off. It doesn't help that Socrates' bathetic turn -- seemingly pro-suicide -- follows a spate of disturbingly unconvincing arguments. Had the barefoot philosopher OD'ed on hemlock sooner than we thought? Madison thinks Socrates deserves more credit and suggests two ways to redeem the passage. First, don't read it literally. Socrates uses "death as a metaphor for conversion to philosophy." The soul and the body are "metonyms for higher and lower ways of life." Socrates calls for rejection not of the flesh but of what the flesh stands for. Instead of yearning for death and knowledge of the afterlife, he yearns for "a life characterized by justice, purity, and understanding"--a philosophical life. The appeal to Asclepius is to heal us of the bodily distractions from philosophy, so that we may attend to Socrates' prized "care of the soul." Second, instead of translating the last words as "and do not forget," Madison suggests "and do not he careless." This makes sense: Socrates had worried most not about his friends' memory but about "the lack of concern people showed for the state of their soul, and the careless way in which they allowed themselves to be consumed and corrupted by their baser desires and interests." So Socrates was no morbid, otherworldly type. He loved his family, his friends, the little pleasures of daily life, says Madison: "The life he calls us to is not a diminished life of denial and denigration, but an enriched and enhanced life--a noble life that is its own reward... for which we should give thanks." A fitting start to any good philosophy. Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2003 Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars http://www.wilsonquarterly.com/page.cfm/About_Wilson_Quarterly Source Citation    MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard "Socrates' Last Words. (Religion & Philosophy)." The Wilson Quarterly, vol. 27, no. 2, spring 2003, pp. 98+. Gale In Context: High School