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The Examined Life is Wise Living: The Relationship Between Mindfulness, Wisdom, and the Moral Foundations

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A Correction to this article was published on 21 January 2021

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Abstract

This correlational study of two independent samples (260 college students and 173 Mechanical Turk workers aged 21–74) examined whether and how mindfulness (broadly construed as a manifold of self-awareness, self-regulation, and self-transcendence), influences wisdom about the self (Adult Self-Transcendence Inventory and Self-Assessed Wisdom Scale) and wisdom about the (social) world (Three-Dimensional Wisdom Scale), and how mindfulness and wisdom impact ethical sensitivities (the five moral foundations). Mindfulness predicted wisdom about the self, and wisdom about the self was linked to an emphasis on the individualizing moral foundations of care/harm avoidance and fairness and, to a lesser degree, on the binding moral foundations of loyalty, authority, and purity. Wisdom about the (social) world was not associated with either mindfulness or the moral foundations. Age was a significant positive predictor for wisdom about the self once the self-awareness component of mindfulness was taken into account.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Shelley Aikman for her vital comments on this paper.

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  1. School of Psychology, Georgia Institute of Technology, 654 Cherry Street NW, Atlanta, GA, 30320, USA

    Paul Verhaeghen

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Verhaeghen, P. The Examined Life is Wise Living: The Relationship Between Mindfulness, Wisdom, and the Moral Foundations. J Adult Dev 27, 305–322 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10804-019-09343-y

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