Are older people wiser?

There is a story about a bank in West Texas which had consistently outperformed all the other banks in its region. When the bank's president decided to retire, the board of directors asked him to stay on long enough to find his replacement. The president agreed to do so, and the board began searching for a new president.

When a new bank president was hired, the board then asked the old bank president to stay on a little longer to ensure a smooth transition. He again agreed, and for a time the two presidents occupied adjoining offices in the bank.

One day, the new bank president entered the old bank president’s office and said, “Sir, for years you have led this bank to great success. Do you have any words of wisdom that will help me continue what you have started?”

The old bank president thought for a moment and said, “Two words: good decisions.”

The younger president considered this for a moment and then asked, “So how do I make good decisions?”

The old banker responded, “One word: wisdom.”

The young president shot back, “But how do I gain wisdom?”

“Two words,” replied the old president. “Bad decisions.”

Life Experience and Wisdom

Just like the old bank president, seniors draw on the wisdom garnered from life experience to make good decisions.

As older adults mature, they do not simply take facts at face value; they interpret what they see or hear in terms of meaning. They filter those facts through their own life experiences and learning to make good decisions.[1]

Thanks to an extensive base of knowledge and life experience, seniors tend to review much less information and eliminate choices and possibilities more quickly, using the experience in decision-making they accumulated over their lifetime to determine the long-term utility – not just immediate benefits – before making a choice. This compares to younger adults who tend to do the opposite, focusing their decision-making on more immediate impacts.[2]

Furthermore, seniors are more autonomous than younger consumers and more intuitive in their decision-making. Why? Because they draw heavily from wisdom and experience they have acquired over the course of their lives.[3]

This tends to lead to seniors being less subject to peer pressure than younger consumers. Keeping-up-with-the-Joneses is not as important as it once was. Purchase decisions are made more on the basis of the value and utility a product or service can deliver.

That said, older adults can stumble when depending solely on life experience to drive their decision-making. John A. Meacham, a psychologist at State University of New York at Buffalo, noted that older people often know too much and are too sure of their knowledge. The end result of this over-confidence might be considered a lack of wisdom! His observation is that truly “wise people balance the acquisition of knowledge with a recognition of its inherent fallibility.”[4]

Shades of Grey

One of the values of life experience is the ability among seniors to grasp paradoxes, reconcile contradictions and make compromises. Issues are not necessarily as black-and-white as younger consumers might observe. Whereas “intelligence” allows some to figure out how to do something, “wisdom” asks if it should be done. It enables seniors to go beyond a single answer and empowers seniors to open up to look at things in new ways.[5] After all, seniors don’t stop learning. For most, they are lifelong learners!

Wisdom and Well-being

Surveys of people in nursing homes and hospices, conducted by Monika Ardelt, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Florida, found that wisdom – or at least the perception of wisdom – is positively related to a senior’s sense of well-being. And the frailer and closer to death people became, the greater the role wisdom plays in their feelings of well-being. It becomes more central to their lives as they age and compensates for much of their decline.[6]

While it can be argued that age and wisdom are not necessarily correlated, a strong case can be made that life experience and a lifetime of accumulated knowledge certainly contribute to a senior’s wealth of wisdom.

To quote Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The years teach much which the days never knew.”

[1] I. Oosthuizen; “Are Older People Wiser;” South African Care Forum; 4-27-21

[2] A. Smith; “Researchers Find That Wisdom Really Does Come With Age;” Texas A&M Marketing & Communications; 7-12-11

[3] Finding Direction in the Senior Market – Best Practice White Paper; Society of Certified Senior Advisors; 2012

[4] I. Oosthuizen; “Are Older People Wiser;” South African Care Forum; 4-27-21

[5] Ibid.

[6] A. Smith; “Researchers Find That Wisdom Really Does Come With Age”