Wisdom predicts emotional intelligence and wise reasoning

ABSTRACT

In a recent article in The Journal of Positive Psychology, Schneider et al. (2023) examined the relations of emotional intelligence (EI) on wise reasoning and three-dimensional wisdom. They concluded that only the managing emotions branch of EI predicted wise reasoning, contingent upon epistemic humility and need for cognition in Study 1 (N = 99) and epistemic humility, empathic concern, and perspective taking in Study 2 (N = 150). Unfortunately, this article has several problems, including (a) the mischaracterization of three-dimensional wisdom as knowledge rather than personality qualities, (b) mediating variables whose concepts and measures partially overlapped with wise reasoning and wisdom, and (c) some problems with computing the three-dimensional wisdom scale (3D-WS) in Study 2. I tested alternative path models, which showed that three-dimensional wisdom predicted EI and wise reasoning, whereas EI by itself did not predict wise reasoning. Wise reasoning might depend more on personal wisdom than EI.

KEYWORDS:

• Emotional intelligence
• three-dimensional wisdom
• wise reasoning
• epistemic humility
• need for cognition
• empathic concern
• perspective taking

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data for the analyses were downloaded from the Open Science Framework website at https://osf.io/yrktn/