Experiential Wisdom and Optimal Experience: Interviews with Three Distinguished Lifelong Learners

The present article suggests that lifelong learning is enhanced by the capacity to make experiential course corrections that lead back to states of interest and flow experience. The notion of experiential wisdom is introduced to describe such a capacity for navigation. A person with experiential wisdom recognizes that optimal experiences are more likely to occur when an affectively charged intuitive mode works in synchrony with a deliberative rational mode and is better able to cultivate situations where the interrelation of these two modes is optimized. The first part of the article provides a framework for understanding experiential wisdom and the regulation of optimal experience. The second part illustrates the practice of experiential wisdom by drawing on interviews with three distinguished lifelong learners—poet Mark Strand, social scientist Donald Campbell, and medical researcher Jonas Salk.     

Hindsight Bias: A Primer for Motivational Researchers

Thirty‐five years since the publication of Fischhoff’s (1975) seminal article, we continue to be fascinated by the hindsight bias. Like a well‐developed character in a novel, the bias has something for everyone. Its basic tenet – that things seem less surprising in hindsight than they should – is instantly recognizable as a common human flaw. It is robust, often difficult to reduce, and appeals to researchers with a wide range of interests including history, business, law, medicine, and of course, psychology. This interest stems from the belief that failure to be surprised by an event prevents us from learning from it, and will likely cause us to judge others unfairly for not having been able to foresee it. But just how bad is it? Although guided by a cold cognitive mechanism that ‘creeps up’ on us, hindsight bias is complex, seemingly strengthened, and yet also reduced by self‐serving motives. In this article, I introduce the reader to the basic designs used to study the bias, key cognitive and motivational mechanisms, the major controversies, and some unstudied questions that I hope will guide future research.     

A Meta-Analysis of Research on Hindsight Bias

We conducted a meta-analysis of research on hindsight bias to gain an up-to-date summary of the overall strength of hindsight effects and to test hypotheses about potential moderators of hindsight distortion. A total of 95 studies (83 published and 12 unpublished) were included, and 252 independent effect sizes were coded for moderator variables in 3 broad categories involving characteristics of the study, of measurement, and of the experimental manipulation. When excluding missing effect sizes, the overall mean effect size was Md = .39 with a 95% confidence interval of .36 to .42. Five main findings emerged: (a) effect sizes calculated from objective probability estimates were larger than effect sizes calculated from subjective probability estimates; (b) effect sizes of studies that used almanac questions were larger than effect sizes of studies that used real-world events or case histories; (c) studies that included neutral outcomes resulted in larger effect sizes than studies that used positive or negative outcomes; (d) studies that included manipulations to increase hindsight bias resulted in significantly larger effect sizes than studies in which there were no manipulations to reduce or increase hindsight bias; and (e) studies that included manipulations to reduce hindsight bias did not produce lower effect sizes. These findings contribute to our understanding of hindsight bias by updating the state of knowledge, widening the range of known moderator variables, identifying factors that may activate different mediating processes, and highlighting critical gaps in the research literature.     

走向整合的智力研究 ——Demetriou的经验结构式认知发展理论述评

基于经验结构式认知发展理论的智力结构包含环境指向系统、超认知系统和加工系统三个层次。环境指向系统用于表征和加工不同领域的信息,加工系统是个体加工信息的操作平台,超认知系统负责监控和调节其他两个系统的认识活动。三个层次的发展既具有各自的特点又相互影响。因此,该理论指出智力结构的发展是一个动态平衡过程,存在三种发展变化模式：自下而上、自上而下和平行变化。智力结构层次内和层次间的发展都要遵循四种变化的机制。该理论作为整合型智力理论有自己的优势,但在概念使用、超认知概念的提出以及执行功能在结构中定位等问题有待商榷     

人慧与物慧:基于智慧描述词与提名智慧者的分类

为揭示一般人内隐的智慧分类机制及智慧类型,考察了51名硕士生对智慧描述词和提名智慧者的分类。多维标度分析与聚类分析表明,40个智慧描述词的语义空间包括人文才能/科技才能和内在特质/外在表现两个维度,分为自然科学才能、社会科学才能和人文科学才能三类;40个提名智慧者的语义空间包括自然科学者/人文社科者和人际间的/个人内的两个维度,分为自然智慧者、社会智慧者和人文智慧者三类。综合分类结果及中西智慧文化,根据智慧内包含才能或能力的性质或要解决的问题性质,智慧可分为人慧与物慧两大类型。     

Reversibility of the Hindsight Bias: Manipulation of Experimental Demands

A hindsight bias is found when ratings made after outcome feedback differ from ratings made before feedback. Cognitive processes, motivational factors, and demand characteristics have all been identified as possible mediators of the effect. In the first of two experiments, providing subjects with a forewarning with or without a passage that was predicted to have caused it to be ineffective in previous research failed to reduce the bias. Subsequent instructions to produce the bias inflated the effect, whereas instructions to not produce the bias did not alter ratings. In the second experiment, experimental demands were altered by forewarning subjects about a "never-knew-that" effect. The results from Experiment 2 replicated the failure of the forewarning instructions. However, the hindsight bias was removed by instructions to produce a "never-knew-that" effect. The implications of these two experiments for research into the hindsight bias were discussed.     

Age Differences in Processes Underlying Hindsight Bias: A Life-Span Study

Hindsight bias is the tendency to overestimate one’s prior knowledge of a fact or event after learning the actual fact. Recent research has suggested that age-related differences in hindsight bias may be based on age-related differences in inhibitory control. We tested whether this explanation held for 3 cognitive processes assumed to underlie hindsight bias: recollection bias, reconstruction bias, and the tendency to adopt newly acquired knowledge as old. We performed a typical hindsight-bias study with 9-year-olds, 12-year-olds, young adults, and older adults. Participants first gave numerical judgments to difficult almanac questions. They later received the correct judgments for some of the questions while trying to recall their own earlier judgments. To experimentally test the impact of inhibitory control, the correct judgment was presented either in a weak or in a strong manner that was difficult to ignore. Hindsight bias was larger in the strong condition than in the weak condition and followed a U-shaped life-span pattern with young adults showing the least hindsight bias in line with an inhibitory-control explanation. Yet, the mixture of underlying processes differed considerably between age groups, so inhibitory control did not suffice as a sole explanation of age differences.     

Hindsight bias after receiving self-relevant health risk information: A motivational perspective

The phenomenon of hindsight bias was explored in the context of self-relevant health risk information. Participants in a community screening estimated their cholesterol level (foresight measure) before receiving positive or negative feedback based on their actual cholesterol level. Hindsight estimations were then assessed twice: once immediately after the feedback, and again several weeks later. While the unexpected positive feedback group showed no systematic recall bias, hindsight estimations of individuals receiving unexpectedly negative feedback showed a dynamic change over time. Immediately after the feedback, participants' recollection of their expected cholesterol level were shifted towards their actual cholesterol level (hindsight bias). In contrast, several weeks later, foresight estimations were recalled as less accurate than they had been (reversed hindsight bias). These data might reflect a change of the motivational focus from "hot affect" and fear control, which occur immediately after receiving negative feedback, to danger control, which occurs some time after the feedback, as proposed by the dual process model.     

Looking Forward Via Hindsight: A Rationale for Reviewing Our Ideological Roots

This article points to a lack of historical studies and posits a rationale for historical study of personalities, events, and ideas in the growth of guidance and counseling. The rationale proceeds from a focus on definitions of history through a treatise on historical methodology and narrows to reasons and implications for historical studies in the social sciences, especially in counseling and guidance. The purpose of this rationale is to stimulate and refine current developments in the field through increased attention to pioneers, their ideas, and efforts in contributing to the development of guidance and counseling.     

Certainty and Uncertainty: The Two Faces of the Hindsight Bias

“Hindsight Bias” is a person's tendency, after learning about the actual outcome of a situation or the correct answer to a question, to distort a previous judgment in the direction of this new information. In the literature, hindsight bias has been mostly discussed as an inevitable result of a “judgment under uncertainty.” We think that the hindsight bias is due to memorial as well as inferential processes: Whereas certainty about the recollection is memorial and concerns the recollective experience, certainty at the time of the judgment is inferential and concerns the individual's metaknowledge (“I know that I knew that”). In two experiments participants' feelings of certainty were measured indirectly (Koriat & Goldsmith, 1996) by giving participants the option of leaving those questions unanswered about which they felt uncertain. This free-report option was offered to half of the participants in the first estimate phase (concerning time of judgment) and to the second half in the memory phase (concerning the recollective experience). At the end of the session, participants were presented again with the questions they had skipped and were now required to answer them. This procedure allowed us to compare the amount of hindsight bias for the skipped, uncertain items to the spontaneously answered, certain ones. Both experiments demonstrated that the hindsight bias is a result of the interaction of both uncertainty and certainty.     

Translating the ICAP Theory of Cognitive Engagement Into Practice

ICAP is a theory of active learning that differentiates students’ engagement based on their behaviors. ICAP postulates that I nteractive engagement, demonstrated by co‐generative collaborative behaviors, is superior for learning to C onstructive engagement, indicated by generative behaviors. Both kinds of engagement exceed the benefits of A ctive or P assive engagement, marked by manipulative and attentive behaviors, respectively. This paper discusses a 5‐year project that attempted to translate ICAP into a theory of instruction using five successive measures: (a) teachers’ understanding of ICAP after completing an online module, (b) their success at designing lesson plans using different ICAP modes, (c) fidelity of teachers’ classroom implementation, (d) modes of students’ enacted behaviors, and (e) students’ learning outcomes. Although teachers had minimal success in designing Constructive and Interactive activities, students nevertheless learned significantly more in the context of Constructive than Active activities. We discuss reasons for teachers’ overall difficulty in designing and eliciting Interactive engagement.     

A Taxometric Analysis of Experiential Avoidance

Experiential avoidance, a trait-like construct referring to the tendency to rigidly avoid or change unpleasant internal experiences stemming from an unwillingness to experience them, is believed to contribute to the development and maintenance of various forms of psychopathology. Despite significant research on this construct, it remains unclear whether experiential avoidance is dimensional or categorical at the latent level. The current study examined the latent structure of experiential avoidance using three taxometric analytic approaches (MAXimum Eigenvalue, Mean Above Minus Below A Curve, Latent-Mode Factor Analysis) applied to data from two independent samples and using three widely used measures of experiential avoidance. The first sample (n = 922) completed the Multidimensional Experiential Avoidance Questionnaire (Gámez, Chmielewski, Kotov, Ruggero, & Watson, 2011), while the second sample (n = 615) completed the Brief Experiential Avoidance Questionnaire (Gámez et al., 2014) and Acceptance and Action Questionnaire-II (Bond et al., 2011). Across both samples and all three measures, experiential avoidance exhibited a dimensional structure. The clinical and research implications of this finding for experiential avoidance are discussed.     

The Effects of Expertise on the Hindsight Bias

We present data from three experiments examining the effects of objective and subjective expertise on the hindsight bias. In Experiment 1, participants read an essay about baseball or dogs and then answered questions about the baseball essay to the best of their ability, as if they had not read the essay, or to the best of their ability, although they read about dogs. Participants also completed a quiz about baseball rules and terminology, which was an objective measure of expertise. Results demonstrated that as participants' baseball expertise increased, their inability to act as if they never read the essay also increased; expertise exacerbated the hindsight bias. To test the effects of subjective expertise on hindsight bias and investigate factors underlying the relationship, participants in Experiment 2 ranked five topics in order of expertise and gave feeling‐of‐knowing (FOK) ratings for questions from these topics. Foresight participants then saw each question again and answered the questions; hindsight participants saw the questions and answers and gave the probability they would have known the answers had they not been provided. Hindsight bias increased with subjective expertise as did average FOK ratings. In Experiment 3, we experimentally manipulated perceived expertise but found that neither average FOK ratings nor hindsight bias was affected by experimentally induced expertise. Taken together, the results demonstrate that expertise exacerbates both objective and subjective hindsight bias but that an FOK, which likely exists only when expertise is naturally acquired, is necessary to engender the detrimental effect of expertise on the hindsight bias. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Wisdom and good lives: A process perspective

Wisdom and good lives are related. On one hand, judgments about whether wisdom has been manifested are often based on conceptions of what is a good life. On the other hand, wisdom, as manifested by human endeavors throughout history which contributed to the common good over the long term, can itself transform the standards that we use to evaluate good lives. In this article, wisdom is defined as a process encompassing three core components—cognitive integration, embodiment in action, and positive effects for oneself and others. One form of wisdom, which transforms our conceptions of a good life, is discussed, using Mother Teresa's endeavor as an example. Her endeavor which embodied an integrated idea—serving Christ by serving the poorest of the poor—generated positive effects for herself and others, and has transformed people's conceptions of a good life. The relationship of this form of wisdom to hardship, happiness, and old age is also discussed.