Wisdom research started in the 1980s, originally to identify some of the positive changes associated with old age, but which has evolved to define more broadly what it means to be wise.

One thing I guess... people would agree on pretty much everywhere is that wisdom is related to life experience, which does not mean that everyone who has accumulated life experience is also wise.

It's not quite necessary that all of the experience has to have been your own.

You can also, of course, have learned a lot from other people, from watching, seeing, observing what happens to other people.

But there needs to be a lot of experience with life.

A wise person always knows.

I mean, this goes back all the way to Aristotle, this idea that wisdom is kind of the overarching ability to deploy different types of capabilities to different situations.

Professor Gluck also draws attention to fellow wisdom researcher Monika Ardelt, who was the first in the field to really highlight wisdom as a personality trait.