Wisdom represents a fruitful topic for psychological investigations for at least two reasons. First, the study of wisdom emphasizes the search for the continued optimization and the further cultural evolution of the human condition. Second, it exemplifies the collaboration of cognitive, emotional, and motivational processes. The growth and scope of psychological wisdom research over the past few decades demonstrate that it is possible to investigate this complex construct with empirical rigor. Since the 1970s, five main areas have been established: lay definitions of wisdom, conceptualizing and measuring wisdom, understanding the development of wisdom, investigating the plasticity of wisdom, and applying psychological knowledge about wisdom in life contexts.

Wisdom is a field of growing interest both inside and outside academic psychology, and researchers are increasingly interested in using measures of wisdom in their work. However, wisdom is a highly complex construct, and its various operationalizations are based on quite different definitions. Which measure a researcher chooses for a particular research project may have a strong influence on the results. This study compares four well-established measures of wisdom—the Self-Assessed Wisdom Scale (Webster, 2003, 2007), the Three-Dimensional Wisdom Scale (Ardelt, 2003), the Adult Self-Transcendence Inventory (Levenson et al., 2005), and the Berlin Wisdom Paradigm (Baltes and Smith, 1990; Baltes and Staudinger, 2000)—with respect to content, reliability, factorial structure, and construct validity (relationships to wisdom nomination, interview-based wisdom ratings, and correlates of wisdom). The sample consisted of 47 wisdom nominees and 123 control participants. While none of the measures performed “better” than the others by absolute standards, recommendations are given for researchers to select the most suitable measure for their substantive interests. In addition, a “Brief Wisdom Screening Scale” is introduced that contains those 20 items from the three self-report scales that were most highly correlated with the common factor across the scales.

The purpose of this study was to investigate olfactory threshold, odor identification, consistency of label use and their relationships to odor memory in the context of semantic/episodic memory across the human lifespan. A total of 137 subjects aged 4–90 years were tested with several olfactory test procedures. We found that olfactory sensitivity was well developed in children despite the finding that their odor naming and odor memory were inferior to that of adults. In the elderly population, olfactory functions gradually declined, with odor memory and odor identification demonstrating the most significant decline. Semantic encoding was differentially related to odor memory over the human age span. Whereas consistency of label use was the main predictor for odor memory in children and young adults, olfactory identification ability was the main predictor in the elderly study group. We also calculated response bias for the separate age groups and found no differences between children, young adults and elderly. However, with age false alarm rates increased. We conclude that children possess equal olfactory sensitivity compared with adults; however, due to limitations in linguistic capabilities and familiarity to odorants, odor memory and odor identification performance was limited. Additionally, our data indicate major alterations of olfactory processing in advanced age with substantial losses in odor memory and odor identification performance.