"The Wisdom Test"

 

So today I stumbled onto a 7-question "wisdom" test.  This may not be wise of me, but let me tell you the story.

Originally, these stalwarts from Cambridge divided their pursuit of "wisdom" into 6 "identifiable parameters".  They were: Decisiveness; emotional regulation; self- reflection; "pro-social" behavior; "social advising"; and, of course, acceptance of divergent perspectives.  Later, after getting a bit of blowback from their peers, they grudgingly added "spirituality" to the list.  It might be worthwhile to dig into these in depth in a serious post, but since I'm playing this for fun, I'll let 'em lie for now.

So the eggheads got together and made a 28- question list at first, gathered results from it, then decided they needed to get rid of some outliers.  First, you had to get the test took in under 6.5 minutes ("normal" was just under 5).  You had to have a BMI (body-mass-index) of over 16 (so getting yourself another helping next Thanksgiving might be wise). You had to be taller than 3 feet or shorter than 7 feet (midgets and NBA players need not apply).  And, in a nod to illegal immigrants, you couldn't be living with more than 20 people.  "Mind you", they said (and I paraphrase), "It's not that we don't like dummies, skeletons, shorties, basketball players, or illegals, but we find such responses a bit unbelievable and think you're lying."  Given that they also required you to be over 20 years old, speak English, live in the USA, and pass a respected Human Intelligence Test with a 90% or better, you'd think most of these would have been already weeded out.  But, they actually had to bounce 14.66% of respondents (307 out of 2093).

After they got these results, they asked themselves, "Well, this came out okay, but it's a bit clunky.  Let's trim it down some."  Most of the rest of the report discussed the various hoops they leapt through to pick which question in each category would give them the closest scores to the whole 28.  And they came up with seven questions, a representative from each category, and made the test so that you scored each question with a scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree).  Scoring some questions in reverse because of their 'negative' phrasing, here are the Smarty Seven:

-I remain calm under pressure.

-I avoid self-reflection (reversed)

- I enjoy being exposed to diverse viewpoints

- I tend to postpone making major decisions as long as I can (reversed)

- I often don't know what to tell people when they come to me for advice (reversed)

- My spiritual belief gives me inner strength.

- I avoid situations where I know my help will be needed.

Their results?  Well, the revised questionnaire was supposed to take 5.5 seconds per question, cutting 2-3 minutes off the test.

But, what does it REALLY tell you about wisdom?

Well, I gave it first to myself and then to Laurie.  We both got a 3.4 average, which SHOULD mean we're 68% smarter than a total dimwit.  However, since we only matched on TWO questions and still got the same score, perhaps we should just stay with the Biblical standard for wisdom...

Job 12:12  Wisdom is with the aged, and understanding in length of days.