Wisdom, Personality, and Well-Being

This chapter describes three conceptions of wisdom as a personality quality: wisdom as integrative personality, wisdom as optimal personality development, and wisdom as a self-transcendent personality. Empirical evidence shows that wisdom defined and measured as a personality quality is consistently related to the Big Five personality traits and psychological and subjective well-being. Individuals with a wise personality tend to be emotionally stable, open to new experiences, agreeable, conscientious, and extraverted and to report greater psychological and subjective well-being. Two case studies were presented to illustrate the differences between a wise personality and a not-so-wise personality.