Abstract
The purpose of this study was to test two hypotheses that specify different ways of configuring the interface between wisdom and humility. The first hypothesis specifies that greater wisdom is associated with greater humility. This hypothesis is based on the notion that wisdom is needed in order to know when to activate the virtue of humility. The second hypothesis specifies that the relationship between humility and life satisfaction will vary according to the level of wisdom that is possessed by study participants. This hypothesis is based on the notion that wisdom is needed to successfully implement and regulate humility once it has been activated. The data come from a nationwide survey of middle-aged and older adults (N = 1535). The data support both hypotheses. First greater wisdom is associated with greater humility. Second, the results suggest that the relationship between humility and life satisfaction varies across levels of wisdom. The findings help ground the study of wisdom more firmly in the literature on virtues.
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Notes
As Enders (2010) points out, the EM algorithm may produce standard errors that are too small, thereby making study findings appear to be more highly significant than they are in reality. As discussed below, repeating the analyses after employing listwise deletion of missing values provided virtually identical results. Some readers may wonder why multiple imputation was not used instead of EM. Unfortunately, multiple imputation does not provide standardized regression coefficients that are based on the pooled data nor does this procedure provide pooled R2 values. This makes it more difficult to determine the substantive importance of the study findings.
Based on data that utilize listwise deletion of missing values, the relationship between wisdom and humility was: β = .396; p < .001.
The analyses were repeated after using listwise deletion of missing values. The data reveal that the interaction between wisdom and humility on life satisfaction was: b = .020; p < .01.
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Acknowledgments
This research was supported by grants from the John Templeton Foundation and the National Institute on Aging (RO1 AG014749).
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Krause, N. Assessing the Relationships Among Wisdom, Humility, and Life Satisfaction. J Adult Dev 23, 140–149 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10804-016-9230-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10804-016-9230-0