Now you can measure an individual's wisdom with SD-WISE scale

Scientists have been doing wonders one after another over the decades and their popularity has now grown by leaps and bounds. Their achievement has touched such a height that your wisdom may even be measured in a while.

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nabanita chakorborty
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Now you can measure an individual's wisdom with SD-WISE scale

Six specific domains are mainly responsible to define wisdom

Scientists have been doing wonders one after another over the decades and their popularity has now grown by leaps and bounds. Their achievement has touched such a height that your wisdom may even be measured in a while.

Yes! An atypical study led by a group of researchers from the University of California San Diego School of Medicine has discovered an amazing tool that may even assess the level of wisdom of an individual.

According to researchers, the scale is based upon a conceptualisation of wisdom as a trait with a neurobiological as well as psychosocial basis and they named it after the name of San Diego School of Medicine.

Talking about their latest findings Dilip Jeste, director of UC San Diego Centre for Healthy Ageing has said, "There is evidence to suggest that the level of wisdom is dictated to a large degree by neurobiology, and that distinct regions and systems in the brain govern the identified components of wisdom."

"There are measures now that assess a person’s level of wisdom, but they do not incorporate these emerging neurobiological models of the trait. SD-WISE reflects the latest thinking. We believe it may be a useful tool in clinical practice, in addition to its value in bio-psycho-social research, especially investigations into the neurobiology of wisdom and possible interventions to enhance it," Dilip added further.

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The day-long study was conducted on 524 residents of San Diego county, ages 25 to 104, from an on-going longitudinal investigation called the Successful Ageing Evaluation (SAGE) study and researchers mainly focused on physical, cognitive, and psychosocial aspects of successful ageing across the adult lifespan.

At present there are two existing measures i.e., the 12-item Three-Dimensional Wisdom Scale and the 40-item Self-Assessed Wisdom Scale and participants went through the SD-WISE along with the two.

"Both scales are well-established and well-respected," Michael Thomas, assistant professor of psychiatry at UC San Diego School of Medicine was quoted as saying.

"They have demonstrated reliability and validity as scientific tools and were good measures against which to compare SD-WISE," Thomas added.

Moreover, the study finds that six specific domains are mainly responsible to define wisdom and quite interestingly all these domains are linked to distinct regions of the brain, based upon neuroimaging and other scientific evidence.

For example, the domain of prosocial attitudes and behaviours, such as empathy, altruism and social cooperation, is facilitated by the prefrontal cortex (PFC), which are located in the front part of the brain and said to be responsible to complex executive functions.

Other domains manage other signifivant factors such as social decision-making, emotional regulation, reflection/self-understanding, tolerance of diverse values, and ability to effectively deal with uncertainty and ambiguity in life.

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Meanwhile, five of those domains are successfully measured by SD-WISE and the study has shown effective distinctions between individuals’ differing degrees of wisdom.

Researchers along with Dilip Jeste described SD-WISE as a reliable and valid scale and published their latest findings in the Journal of Psychiatric Research.

University of California Wisdom SD-WISE San Diego School of Medicine