Search

Objective: Wisdom has gained increasing interest among researchers as a personality trait relevant to well-being and mental health. We previously reported development of a new 24-item San Diego Wisdom Scale (SD-WISE), with good to excellent psychometric properties, comprised of six subscales: pro-social behaviors, emotional regulation, self-reflection (insight), tolerance for divergent values (acceptance of uncertainty), decisiveness, and social advising. There is controversy about whether spirituality is a marker of wisdom. The present cross-sectional study sought to address that question by developing a new SD-WISE subscale of spirituality and examining its associations with various relevant measures., Methods: Data were collected from a national-level sample of 1,786 community-dwelling adults age 20-82 years, as part of an Amazon M-Turk cohort. Participants completed the 24-item SD-WISE along with several subscales of a commonly used Brief Multidimensional Measure of Religiousness/Spirituality, along with validated scales for well-being, resilience, happiness, depression, anxiety, loneliness, and social network., Results: Using latent variable models, we developed a Spirituality subscale, which demonstrated acceptable psychometric properties including a unidimensional factor structure and good reliability. Spirituality correlated positively with age and was higher in women than in men. The expanded 28-item, 7-subscale SD-WISE total score (called the Jeste-Thomas Wisdom Index or JTWI) demonstrated acceptable psychometric properties. The Spirituality subscale was positively correlated with good mental health and well-being, and negatively correlated with poor mental health. However, compared to other components of wisdom, the Spirituality factor showed weaker (i.e., small-to-medium vs. medium-to-large) association with the SD-WISE higher-order Wisdom factor (JTWI)., Conclusion: Similar to other components as well as overall wisdom, spirituality is significantly associated with better mental health and well-being, and may add to the predictive utility of the total wisdom score. Spirituality is, however, a weaker contributor to overall wisdom than components like pro-social behaviors and emotional regulation. Longitudinal studies of larger and more diverse samples are needed to explore mediation effects of these constructs on well-being and health., (Copyright © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Wisdom is an ancient concept that has gained new interest among clinical researchers as a complex trait relevant to well-being and healthy aging. As the empirical data regarding wisdom have grown, several measures have been used to assess an individual's level of wisdom. However, none of these measures has been based on a construct of wisdom with neurobiological underpinnings. We sought to develop a new scale, the San Diego Wisdom Scale (SD-WISE), which builds upon recent gains in the understanding of psychological and neurobiological models of the trait. Data were collected from 524 community-dwelling adults age 25-104 years as part of a structured multi-cohort study of adult lifespan. Participants were administered the SD-WISE along with two existing measures of wisdom that have been shown to have good psychometric properties. Factor analyses confirmed the hypothesized measurement model. SD-WISE total scores were reliable, demonstrated convergent and discriminant validity, and correlated, as hypothesized, negatively with emotional distress, but positively with well-being. However, the magnitudes of these associations were small, suggesting that the SD-WISE is not just a global measure of mental state. The results support the reliability and validity of SD-WISE scores. Study limitations are discussed. The SD-WISE, with good psychometric properties, a brief administration time, and a measurement model that is consistent with commonly cited content domains of wisdom based on a putative neurobiological model, may be useful in clinical practice as well as in bio-psycho-social research, especially investigations into the neurobiology of wisdom and experimental interventions to enhance wisdom., (Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Background: Schizophrenia is linked with early medical comorbidity and mortality. These observations indicate possible "accelerated biological aging" in schizophrenia, although prior findings are mixed, and few such studies have examined the role of gender. One putative marker of biological aging is leukocyte telomere length (LTL), which typically shortens with age., Methods: We assessed LTL in phenotypically well characterized 134 individuals with schizophrenia (60 women and 74 men) and 123 healthy comparison subjects (HCs) (66 women and 57 men), aged 26 to 65 years., Results: Overall, LTL was inversely associated with age (t(249) = -6.2, p < 0.001), and a gender effect on the rate of LTL decrease with age was found (t(249) = 2.20, p = 0.029), with men declining more rapidly than women. No significant overall effect of diagnosis on the rate of decline was detected. However, at the average sample age (48 years), there was a significant gender effect in both schizophrenia and HC groups (t(249) = 2.48, p = 0.014), with women having longer LTL than men, and a significant gender X diagnosis effect (t(249) = 2.43, p = 0.016) - at the average sample age, women with schizophrenia had shorter LTL than HC women., Discussion: Gender, not the diagnosis of schizophrenia, was the major factor involved with LTL shortening across the age range studied. We discuss the constraints of a cross-sectional design and other methodological issues, and indicate future directions. Understanding the impact of schizophrenia on biological aging will require separate evaluations in men and women., (Published by Elsevier Ltd.)