Take it from those who know: older is not always wiser

William James, the American philosopher, offered the first courses in psychology
William James, the American philosopher, offered the first courses in psychology
ALAMY

“With age comes wisdom,” declared Oscar Wilde. “But sometimes age comes alone.”

He was right. Scientists have found that growing older is no guarantee of growing wiser, if wisdom is an intuitive knack for grasping how others think and behave. The old did no better than the young in a test of how well they understood human foibles such as the way people tend to work harder in a group than on their own.

The most adept “natural psychologists” were clever, gloomy, doubt-riddled introverts in the mould of Philip Larkin or Harper Lee. Anton Gollwitzer, a graduate student at Yale University, Connecticut, said: “Take, for instance, the novelist Ernest Hemingway, or the founder of modern psychology, William James. Without empirical backing, these individuals were able