Is 39 seconds enough to index a person's wisdom?
Neurobiologists have been working on measuring instruments for such an assignment for a long time, because wisdom correlates with resilience, happiness and life satisfaction and protects against loneliness, depression and fear.
Dilip Jeste from the University of California in San Diego has recently managed to do this in the specified record time and with only seven brief self-assessments of statements such as "I stay calm even under stress".
Jeste calls the seven dimensions of wisdom he uses self-reflection, emotion control, tolerance, affection, determination, spirituality and being asked for advice. He also located them in the brain - empathy, altruism and cooperation, for example in the prefrontal cortex, positive and negative emotions in the amygdala and drive control in the limbic system.
There is much to suggest that wisdom is also a key to healthy aging. In view of the increasing aging of Western societies, wisdom research should therefore be high on the priority list of neurosciences and gerontology. Wisdom describes the insight into the fundamental pragmatics of one's own life and that of others. It includes thinking outside the box of your own being. If wisdom can be learned - after all, it tends to increase rather than decrease with age - there must be measures that make people wiser.
So that such measures can claim to also serve healthy aging, protect against loneliness or even prevent suicides, as Jeste thinks, they have to be evaluated according to the rules of evidence-based medicine.
It remains to be seen whether his seven-question index, which he determined in record time, is really capable of this.
Last but not least, the question arises here: What about the wisdom of people who respond socially desirable but not honestly?