There was an article in the Economist last week on the relative levels of wisdom of the Japanese and American populations. A study two years ago in North America, by Igor Grossmann of the University of Waterloo, in Canada, suggested that it Americans acquired more wisdom as they grew older while Japanese youngsters were as wise as their older counterparts.
Dr Grossmann’s study recruited 186 Japanese and compared them with 225 Americans. Participants were asked to read a series of pretend newspaper articles. Half described conflict between groups, such as a debate between residents of an impoverished Pacific island over whether to allow foreign oil companies to operate there following the discovery of petroleum. The other half took the form of advice columns that dealt with conflicts between individuals: siblings, friends and spouses. After reading each article, participants were asked “What do you think will happen after that?” and “Why do you think it will happen this way?” Their responses were recorded and transcribed.
The assessors scored participants’ responses on a scale of one to three. This attempted to capture the degree to which they discussed what psychologists consider five crucial aspects of wise reasoning: willingness to seek opportunities to resolve conflict; willingness to search for compromise; recognition of the limits of personal knowledge; awareness that more than one perspective on a problem can exist; and appreciation of the fact that things may get worse before they get better.
A score of one on any aspect indicated a participant gave no consideration to it. A score of two indicated some consideration. A score of three indicated a great deal of consideration. Each participant’s scores were then added up and mathematically transformed to create an overall value within a range of zero to 100 for both interpersonal and intergroup wisdom.
The upshot was that, as Dr Grossmann had found before, Americans do get wiser with age. Their intergroup wisdom score averaged 45 at the age of 25 and 55 at 75. Their interpersonal score similarly climbed from 46 to 50. Japanese scores, by contrast, hardly varied with age. Both 25-year-olds and 75-year-olds had an average intergroup wisdom of 51. For interpersonal wisdom, it was 53 and 52.
Taken at face value, these results suggest Japanese learn wisdom faster than Americans. But they also suggest a paradox. Generally, America is seen as an individualistic society, whereas Japan is quite collectivist. Yet Japanese have higher scores than Americans for the sort of interpersonal wisdom you might think would be useful in an individualistic society. Americans, by contrast—at least in the maturity of old age—have more intergroup wisdom than the purportedly collectivist Japanese. Perhaps, then, you need individual skills when society is collective, and social ones when it is individualistic. All of which goes to show that the real root of wisdom is this: do not assume,that your prejudices are correct.
One commentator on the Economist website suggests, as has been my experience living in both countries, that the US gives you very little guidance on how to live wisely (other than parents or religion) while Japanese society gives constant input and feedback if you stray. The predictable result is that Americans start out lower and learn many painful lessons for themselves and eventually get wiser while the Japanese have a high average but have difficulty moving beyond the socially received wisdom.
One of the other issues that the article did not mention made by another commentator was that Japanese school curriculums changed dramatically over the past 30 years. The 25 years old who took the test may score much higher when they turn to the age 75. To truly compare how the group "learn" "wisdom", the study needs to follow the same population over the time periods.
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