Faster speed of processing was negatively related to positive affect (r= −.13, p = .06) and relationship quality (r = −.15, p = .05), and positively related to brooding (r = .12, p = .10).

– A Route to Well-Being: Intelligence vs Wise – Reasoning

As you thought about the incident, did you feel immersed into the experience or rather distanced from the experience?

 – Wise Reasoning in the Face of Everyday Life Challenges

How Do You Live? is a story written by Genzaburo Yoshino, published in 1937 which follows the lives of Copper and his friends. Interspersed among the chapters which describe events in Copper’s life, are letters from Copper’s uncle to the former on how to live well. It teaches descriptive writing and how intelligence is different from wisdom.

In the beginning of the book, Copper stands with his uncle “on the roof of a department store in the Ginza district of Tokyo”. From where he stands, Copper realises how he is but a “molecule” in an ocean of people. His uncle later writes him a letter in a notebook and titles it, On Ways of Looking at Things. In this first letter, we see how Copper came to be known as Copper when his given name was Junichi Honda. The uncle praises Honda’s insight and likens his molecular revelation to the Copernican view that contrary to what was once believed, it is the earth which revolves around the sun.

His uncle asked him to “Consider how children understand things” and pointed out that “They (children) are all wrapped up in themselves”. He then adds that “In the world at large, people who are able to free themselves from this self-centred way of thinking are truly uncommon” and that Honda’s but a molecule in an ocean type of thinking is sine qua non “to know the larger truths of the universe”.

In another letter, his uncle asks, “And with extraordinary abilities, isn’t it possible that one might just as easily accomplish extraordinarily bad things?”

In language classes, students learn to express themselves for a variety of purposes and one particular purpose arguably may give the illusion of accomplishment and reinforce an unnecessary and inaccurate psychological better than or not as good as you complex. This is the mode of argumentative writing.

There are ways to phrase arguments and the appearance of certain words in certain orders in sentences can give the impression of forcefulness and the often-attendant notion (not always accurately) of rightness. Students who learn the form of an art may not know the intended objectives of the art and use it or over use it to effect undesirable outcomes for themselves or others.

It has been said that the pen is mightier than the sword and this comparison suggests that language is a weapon. As must have been said many times in many places by many people before, anything that cuts can be used also as a tool. Language can be used to pierce a veil of ignorance. It can also be used in a manner which is unwise.

Igor Grossman is a psychology professor at the University of Waterloo. He runs the Wisdom and Culture Lab at the university. He has written extensively on wisdom. In a 2016 paper he co-authored with colleagues and which was featured in the Frontiers in Behavioural Neuroscience Journal, he cites Staudinger and Glück (2011) and says, “wisdom has been long viewed as too ethereal” but in “the last 25 years researchers have established several psychological components of wise judgement”.

His insights show what it means to be wise in the use of intelligence. By way of preface, it may be useful to point out that there may exist notions of wisdom as being void of pleasure or as the enlightenment which comes after having seen through the futility of pleasure.

However, as Gluck and colleagues (2022) explain, “highly wise individuals might also be higher in hedonic well-being than other people in spite of, or even because of their experience and willingness to engage with the more difficult sides of life”. They add that wise individuals “appreciate and relish even small pleasures”.

So, what does it mean to be wise in words and deeds, sometimes despite strong language ability? Researchers seem agreed on the following. Wisdom allows for a continuation and comprises “pragmatic reasoning” which requires “recognizing the world is in flux and the future is likely to change, recognizing there are limits associated with one’s own knowledge” and it is “prosocial” (Kross & Grossman, 2011).

It requires a calm and “self-distanced” (Grossman et al., 2016) appraisal of events, especially those which lend themselves to emotional reactions. In A Heart and A Mind: Self-distancing Facilitates the Association Between Heart Rate Variability, and Wise Reasoning, Grossman and his colleagues showed both what wise engagement looks like and how it is facilitated.

Participants of their study were asked to comment on social issues and on “desirable/ undesirable acts committed by another person”. In this study, responses deemed wise, were those which took on board various perspectives especially those which may not have served one’s own interests. When asked to comment on someone who did something undesirable, some thought the act revealed the heart of the actor. Those who were deemed as wise considered also the situation this someone had been in.

Their paper shows the following. High heart rate variability is a prerequisite for reasoning in a calm way even when there are reasons to be riled up. Those with high heart rate variability can reason very well and unwisely, which according to these authors refers to reasoning which is “biased” or “self-serving”. In order to be wise, we need to achieve some distance between ourselves and the situation. So, in sum, a wise response is one which is a result of reasoning which is careful in two ways. First, the reasoning itself has to be careful such that it is coherent and persuasive in its expression. Second it has to be careful in the sense that it is measured to effect a positive “prosocial” outcome.

The link between distance and heart rate variability may come to light when we consider what heart rate variability is. According to Whoop.com, it is the “variance in time between the beats of your heart” caused by “two competing branches of the autonomic nervous system, sympathetic and parasympathetic”. The former is responsible for “fight or flight” and the latter for “rest and digest”. When the sympathetic system is in overdrive, the heart rate goes up and the heart rate variability goes down.

When the fight or flight response is triggered, it is difficult to reason. With distance, the situation may no longer require either response.

Reasonability and reasonableness are not always the same thing.

The Brain Dojo