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Stories of Wisdom: A Qualitative Analysis of Autobiographical Narratives of Relatively Wise and Unwise Individuals

The scientific study of wisdom is a contentious field. There is little agreement among dominant research programs concerning how to conceptualize and measure the elusive phenomenon of wisdom. The current study argues for a narrative analysis of this concept given that autobiographical stories offer a contextually rich vista into real-life manifestations of wisdom. Presented here is a qualitative investigation of autobiographical wisdom narratives from 8 individuals distributed across parameters of age, gender, and degree of wisdom. Results point to the possibility that relatively wise persons define wisdom more elaborately, participate in more sophisticated autobiographical reasoning processes, and engage with master narratives in a more evaluative and critical manner than relatively unwise individuals. These features did not appear to differ across levels of age and gender. This study validates a narrative approach to the science of wisdom, and suggests that stories may be central to advancing our understanding of this concept.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:OTU.1807/27369
Date31 May 2011
CreatorsWeststrate, Nicholas Maarten
ContributorsFerrari, Michel
Source SetsLibrary and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada
Languageen_ca
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis

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