The role of emotions in wise reasoning is not well understood. On the one hand, work on emotional regulation suggests downregulating intense emotions may lead to wiser reasoning. On the other hand, emerging work suggests recognizing and balancing emotions provides critical insights into life experiences, suggesting an alternative path to wiser reasoning. We present a series of observational, diary, and experimental studies (N = 3,678) addressing these possibilities, examining how wisdom-related characteristics of reasoning-epistemic humility, recognition of a world in flux/change, self-transcendence, recognition of diverse perspectives on an issue, search for integration of diverse perspectives/compromise-relate to emotional intensity and to emodiversity (i.e., emotional richness and evenness) in a given situation. Across five studiestesting wisdom nominees and examining individual differences and manipulated wise reasoning, it appeared in conjunction with emodiversity, independent of downregulated emotional intensity. The positive association between emodiversity and wisdom-related characteristics occurred consistently for daily challenges, unresolved interpersonal conflicts, as well as political conflicts. The relationship between emotional intensity and wisdom-related characteristics was less systematic, with some studies suggesting a positive (rather than negative) association between emotional intensity and wisdom. Together, these results demonstrate that wise reasoning does not necessarily require uniform emotional downregulation. Instead, wise reasoning can also benefit from a rich and balanced emotional life.

Most people can reason relatively wisely about others' social conflicts, but often struggle to do so about their own (i.e., Solomon's Paradox; Grossmann & Kross, 2014). We suggest that true wisdom should involve the ability to reason wisely about others' and one's own social conflicts.The present studies investigate the pursuit of virtue as a construct that predicts this broader capacity for wisdom. Results across two studies support prior Solomon's Paradox findings: participants (N = 623) expressed greater wisdom (e.g., intellectual humility, adopting outsider's perspectives) about others' social conflicts than their own. The pursuit of virtue (e.g., pursuing personal ideals and contributing to others) moderated these results. In both studies, high virtue pursuit was associated with a greater endorsement of wise reasoning strategies for one's own personal conflicts, reducing the discrepancy in wise reasoning between one's own and others' social conflicts. Implications and mechanisms are explored and discussed. Wisdom and Virtue. In accordance with philosophers who spoke of wisdom and virtue as inextricably linked, researchers acknowledge that virtuous motives are a central component of wisdom (e.g., Baltes & Staudinger, 2000). In the psychological literature, wisdom and virtue are often juxtaposed, with both being said to encourage greater empathy, selflessness, and compassion (Le, 2011;Dambrun & Ricard, 2011). Yet, despite the two concepts often being discussed together, little has been done to explore exactly how virtue may be related to wisdom.Contemporary operationalizations of wisdom suggest it is comprised of multiple subcomponents (e.g., intellectual humility, perspective-taking, search for compromise; recognition of change; Grossmann et al., 2010). In limited work thus far, research suggests that virtue may be able to promote several of wisdom's subcomponents. For example, those who expressed virtuous motives-defined as a desire to act beyond personal interests and develop the best in oneself-were also more likely to minimize self-focus (Huta & Ryan, 2010), and express greater growth and insight after difficult life experiences (Bauer, McAdams & Pals, 2008).Further, research by Kunzmann & Baltes (2003) found that wisdom-related knowledge is positively associated with the importance of personal growth and the well-being of others. These findings suggest that pursuing virtue reduces a focus on egocentric views, and increases the value of others' unique experiences and perspectives, both central tenets of wise reasoning (Grossmann, Na, Varnum, Kitayama, & Nisbett, 2013). If this is true, then pursuing virtue should encourage the recognition that one's personal perspectives may not be enough to fully understand a conflict, promoting wisdom about one's own conflicts as well as others'.Research Overview. The first goal of the present studies was to replicate Solomon's Paradox, demonstrating that people tend to reason more wisely about others' conflicts than their own. Our second goal was to test our...

Talking about helping others makes a person seem warm and leads to social approval. This work examines the real world consequences of this basic, social-cognitive phenomenon by examining whether record-low levels of public approval of the US Congress may, in part, be a product of declining use of prosocial language during Congressional debates. A text analysis of all 124 million words spoken in the House of Representatives between 1996 and 2014 found that declining levels of prosocial language strongly predicted public disapproval of Congress 6 mo later. Warm, prosocial language still predicted public approval when removing the effects of societal and global factors (e.g., the September 11 attacks) and Congressional efficacy (e.g., passing bills), suggesting that prosocial language has an independent, direct effect on social approval.US Congress | language | impression formation | public approval | LIWC A s recently as 2002, public approval of Congress was reliably over 50% and as high as 84%. In late 2013, though, public approval reached an all-time low, with less than 10% of Americans expressing support (1). What caused this dramatic decline in public approval in just over a decade? One explanation is that the public held Congress responsible for societal and global problems (e.g., a weak economy) (2, 3). A second explanation is that the public disapproves of ineffective governance. For example, public approval of Congress tends to drop when Republicans and Democrats are polarized against one another and when Congress conflicts with the President (4, 5). We test a third explanation that has less to do with action and more to do with talk (6). We suggest that recent public disapproval partly resulted from the disappearance of warm, prosocial language in Congressional discourse.Previous experimental research has shown that presenting a warm and prosocial demeanor increases social approval (7). People reveal a wealth of information about their feelings and intentions through verbal communication (8-10). The speaker's underlying motives notwithstanding, talking about helping others makes positive impressions upon an audience (11). We investigated whether this well-documented finding can explain public perceptions of Congress. Specifically, we asked whether the recent rise of public disapproval of Congress is predicted by declining prosocial language of elected representatives.To measure prosocial language, we computer analyzed all 123,927,807 words spoken in session of the US House of Representatives between 1996 and 2014. Our approach was to look for linguistic markers of prosocial language; we used content analysis software (12) to calculate the proportion of words in the target text that matched entries in a validated dictionary of prosocial words (13). We then compared levels of prosocial language within each month of Congress with their approval ratings by the American public (14) and found a striking match. Fig. 1 shows that levels of prosocial language and the public's approval followed the same trajectory ...

People are motivated to behave selfishly while appearing moral. This tension gives rise to 2 divergently motivated selves. The actor-the watched self-tends to be moral; the agent-the self as executor-tends to be selfish. Three studies present direct evidence of the actor's and agent's distinct motives. To recruit the self-as-actor, we asked people to rate the importance of various goals. To recruit the self-as-agent, we asked people to describe their goals verbally. In Study 1, actors claimed their goals were equally about helping the self and others (viz., moral); agents claimed their goals were primarily about helping the self (viz., selfish). This disparity was evident in both individualist and collectivist cultures, attesting to the universality of the selfish agent. Study 2 compared actors' and agents' motives to those of people role-playing highly prosocial or selfish exemplars. In content (Study 2a) and in the impressions they made on an outside observer (Study 2b), actors' motives were similar to those of the prosocial role-players, whereas agents' motives were similar to those of the selfish role-players. Study 3 accounted for the difference between the actor and agent: Participants claimed that their agent's motives were the more realistic and that their actor's motives were the more idealistic. The selfish agent/moral actor duality may account for why implicit and explicit measures of the same construct diverge, and why feeling watched brings out the better angels of human nature.