Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jun 21, 2025
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Task Interruption and Resumption Paradigm for Testing the Activation and Pursuit of an Abstract Thinking Goal
Published on: April 18, 2017
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The Wise Mind Balances the Abstract and the Concrete.
Igor Grossmann1, Johanna Peetz2, Anna Dorfman3
1Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada.
Open Mind : Discoveries in Cognitive Science
|July 8, 2024
Summary
Wise reasoning involves balancing abstract and concrete thinking. Individuals who effectively switch between these mental representations demonstrate greater wisdom in complex situations.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Social Psychology
Background:
- Wise reasoning is crucial for navigating complex, uncertain social situations.
- Understanding individual differences in mental representations can illuminate variations in wisdom.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the impact of abstract and concrete mental representations on wise reasoning.
- To evaluate the relationship between construal abstractness/concreteness and facets of wisdom.
Main Methods:
- Development of situated methods to capture abstract and concrete mental representations and switching.
- Analysis of data from 1,151 North American and UK participants.
- Natural language processing (NLP) of unstructured texts and a repeated strategy-choice method.
Main Results:
- Both abstract and concrete construals significantly contribute to wise reasoning, independent of covariates.
- High wisdom participants (top 25%) showed greater use of both abstract and concrete themes in their semantic networks compared to low wisdom participants (bottom 25%).
- A balanced switching between abstract and concrete construals correlated with higher wisdom.
Conclusions:
- Mental representations, specifically the interplay of abstract and concrete thinking, are key to wise reasoning.
- Individual differences in the ability to balance and switch between construal types predict wisdom levels.
- Findings enhance the understanding of how mental representations shape reasoning in everyday life.
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