Study reveals that being older doesn’t necessarily mean you’re wiser

It has long been said that getting older makes you wiser, but one study from the Yale University claims that this is not necessarily true, particularly when it comes to understanding how others think and behave.

Researchers from the study tasked 1000 volunteers with trying to interpret the way the average person thinks, feels and acts in certain situations. All the volunteers were asked to complete forty questions which assessed their understanding of social dynamics. From the responses, the researchers discovered that older people scored the same as younger people when it came to understanding intrinsic human behaviour patterns.

By analysing the high scoring participants they found that those with the most wisdom tended to be introverts who were prone to melancholy. Unfortunately, that means the sadder you are the wiser.

Anton Gollwitzer, a Yale graduate involved with the study told the Daily Mail that he believed that melancholic people scored higher because they spent more time observing human interaction rather than participating in it. 

“They don’t view the world through rose-colored glasses as jovial and extroverted people do,” he said.

While the Yale study found people with a higher IQ tended to be wiser, other studies have found that the working classes have the real upper hand when it comes to wisdom. In 2017, a team at the University of Waterloo in Canada looked at the responses of 2100 participants, asking them to remember how they dealt with their most recent social conflict.

This study found that while people from higher classes have greater opportunities when it comes to education and knowledge, their focus on self-improvement lowers their ability to successfully resolve conflicts.

The Yale wisdom test used in the experiment is available online, so if you are curious to see how you’d fare, click on the link below.

Yale University: Are You a Natural Social Psychologist?

Do you think you have become wiser since your retirement? What did you get on the test? Tell us in the comments section below.