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Running head: AGING

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Subject: Human Cognitive Development

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AGING

Wisdom with age

Wisdom cannot be associated with age as it will be a risk in losing its essence because it can

even be in a child. Despite association with age, its nature can be considered and a conclusion of

essence made. The essence of wisdom is holding an attitude of how prone knowledge is and

striving to balance between doubting and knowing (Erickson, 1982). Therefore, wisdom is an

exceptional and willingness ability of formulating judgments executed during development. It is

also described to be a way of recognizing how uncertain knowledge is and how hard it is to know

the truth (Dixon& Baltes, 1986). From its essence, it is thus an attitude a person takes toward

values, beliefs, skills, abilities, information, and knowledge. This essay aims at evaluating

whether age increases, decreases or takes other trajectory with age.

(Wohlwill, 1973) argues that some reasonable developmental functions must be considered to

prove that wisdom solely increases with age. In addition to this, it has been linked to old age and

late adulthood. There are two main reasons for this linkage and they include; human being

inadequate extemporary observation on wisdom coincidence and individual needs especially

young adults attributing wisdom to old age people. Making an attribution of wisdom from a

speech or some typical behavior involves impression of older people as a hypothesis can be

made that wisdom increases or decreases with age. Older adults are associated with wise

behavior and remarkable speaking and this is usually done by making observations and coming

up with a reasonable guess.

Awareness of responsibilities and difficulties related to adulthood among young adults

explains why wisdom increases with age. Older adults have experience they learned from the

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past and see things from a larger perspective before making decisions. They also think carefully,

use common sense, understand ways of life, knowledgeable and moral than young adults making

them wiser (Holliday & Chandler’s, 1986). Therefore, young people are recommended to trust

and believe attributes of older people especially those who hold power in society, as they would

turn to them for advice.

In contrast, wisdom may decrease with age because some older people perceive distance

between encouragement of being old and wisdom to be greater (Clayton & Birren, 1980). Some

researchers have evaluated wisdom to be among some young people and adults. Consequently,

when a young person loses wisdom, he or she may be depressed and a coping with the notion

that it increases with age can help.

Most researchers of wisdom concur that it does not increase with age automatically because it

is relatively rare among the older people. (Kekes, 1983) states that people can be old but foolish

but their likeliness of being wise is because growth takes time hence its increase with age. This

makes sense because no one can be born wise but experiences in life give an expectation that it

will increase with time.

According to Richardson & Pasupathi (2005), increase in wisdom with age reflects personal

development and normal intellectual. Beyond young adulthood and adolescence, wisdom will

only increase with age if they aggressively pursue its development and learn from experiences.

However, there is research that wisdom does not increase with age or not change after adulthood

in young individuals. This assumes that its development is not related to experiences in life or

these experiences may not cause wisdom loss.

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Cultural uncertainties and personal tragedies might decrease wisdom with time because there

will be loss in confidence and meaning in the society as doubt increases. On the other hand,

economic, educational, social, and occupational success may also cause wisdom loss if it results

in unquestioned self-centered, certainty, intolerance, and prejudice.

Wisdom may increase with age for some individuals, decreases at specific times and remain

stable for other people. Age solely is not likely to explain wisdom development in the course of

life. Actually, degree of wisdom variation may increase with age in a similar way personality,

cognitive, and biological characteristics increase in life. Therefore, it is not guaranteed that it

must increase with age.

In cognitive development, wisdom increases from childhood to adulthood through

adolescence and it seems to increase with lived experience. However, psychological, social, and

physical losses in late life decrease it. Therefore, the concepts in researches of psychology about

its increase with age do not automatically appear real and human development features may

show strong associations with age.

It can be concluded that wisdom is an attribute located within an individual’s mind and

increases through experience. Some factors may hinder development of wisdom making it

decrease with age or remain constant. There is a notion that older people are wiser than young

ones in most cases but sometimes even younger individuals are wise. Problems decreasing

wisdom among older people have been evaluated in this essay. They include personal tragedies,

and cultural uncertainties, economic, educational, social, and occupational successes out of self-

centered, uncertainty, intolerance, and prejudice. Cognitive human development of wisdom

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explains how difficult it is to avoid problems associated with wisdom in adult lives. Therefore,

wisdom either increases or decreases or remains constant with age and time.

References

Coleman, P. G., & O'Hanlon, A. (2017). Aging and development: Social and emotional perspectives.

Dale Dannefer & Chris Phillipson (eds.) (2010). The SAGE Handbook of Social Gerontology. Los Angeles,

London, New Delhi, Singapore, Washington DC: SAGE Publications, 712 pp. ISBN 978 1 4129 3464 0

(hardcover). (2012).

Kitchener, K. S., & Brenner, H. G. (n.d.). Wisdom and Reflective Judgement: knowing in the face of

uncertainty.

Meachan, J. A. (1990). The loss of wisdom.

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