Wisdom and Culture Lab at University of Waterloo

Charles & I have a new OnWisdom episode, & I am starstruck - one of my intellectual heroes Alan Fiske joined us to talk about K**a Muta, measurement of affective processes and emotion labels across cultures, and the value of descriptive work

Wisdom, Love, and the Lexical Fallacy (with Alan Fiske) Why do we have such a hard time figuring out what we’re feeling? Alan Fiske joins Igor and Charles to unravel the mystery of emotions, revealing why your gut feeling might not be as clear-cut as you think. Drawing from his research into K**a Muta—a heartwarming rush of connection—and his criti...

🎯 Job Alert! The Wise Judgment Consortium (https://wiseminds.uwaterloo.ca) is hiring a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the University of Waterloo to dive into the fascinating world of wisdom and judgment across cultures using cutting-edge NLP techniques! 🌐🧠

📍 Location: Waterloo, Ontario (Hybrid)
🕒 Start Date: Winter '25

Join a global team of experts like Maxim Rudne, Melody Chao, Cendri Hutcherson, Falk Lieder, Sam Johnson, Tomas Hills, and many others as we explore how diverse cultures approach decision-making, moving beyond traditional Western models. This is your chance to make a real impact on how we understand wisdom in a global context!

Interested? Apply now and become part of something groundbreaking! 🚀

🔍 More details and how to apply!
📧 Applications to: [email protected]



Wise Judgment Consortium seeks to understand the role of for and , aiming to redefine beyond Western-centric models More here:
https://bit.ly/WiseJudgment

New paper alert! 🚨📜 Our international Geography of Philosophy Project team just published groundbreaking research on how wisdom is perceived across cultures.

🌏 We found two universal dimensions of wisdom:
1️⃣ Reflective Orientation: focused thinking, logic, emotional control
2️⃣ Socio-Emotional Awareness: understanding people and social context

The wisest individuals score high on both! 🧠❤️ Surprisingly, at lower levels of reflection, being *less* socio-emotionally aware was seen as wiser. 🤔

Quite proud of cutting-edge statistical methods Maxim Rudne - the lead author - developed to enable rigorous comparisons across 13 languages and 8 cultural regions. 📊🗺️

This collaborative effort is a product of many brilliant researchers worldwide incl. Clark Barrett Edouard Machery Stephen Stich Wesley Buckwalter (who pitched the initial idea to me) and many many others. It is a major step towards understanding wisdom on a global scale! 🌍🤝

Check out the full paper in Nature Communications! 📄🔍 https://rdcu.be/dQT98

CANADIAN COMMUNITY STUDY

NORTH AMERICAN COMMUNITY STUDY

Help us collect information on how people work through life challenges to advance the science of wisdom!

CANADIAN COMMUNITY STUDY

We are looking for participants for our new study.

CANADIAN COMMUNITY STUDY