ACT Wise

Wisdom sounds like an idea that should be easy to understand and nearly impossible to study. Most of us have an intuitive sense of what wisdom looks like. We think of good judgment, perspective, humility, emotional steadiness, and the ability to make sense of difficult situations. But once researchers try to define and measure it, things get considerably messier.

Psychological research over the last several decades suggests that wisdom is not a single trait. Different models emphasize somewhat different features, and different measurement approaches do not always produce the same results. Still, several themes appear repeatedly: intellectual humility, perspective-taking, tolerance of uncertainty, emotional regulation, reflection, openness, prosocial concern, and the ability to integrate competing interests when making decisions (Bangen et al., 2013; Grossmann et al., 2020; Staudinger & Glück, 2011).

A major meta-analysis of roughly three decades of wisdom research reinforces this complexity. Dong and colleagues (2023) found that self-reported wisdom and performance-based wisdom have somewhat different psychological correlates. In other words, believing that you are wise and demonstrating wise reasoning are not necessarily the same thing. Still, both forms of wisdom were positively associated with openness and with both hedonic and eudaimonic well-being.

That distinction matters because wisdom research increasingly suggests that wisdom is not simply something a person possesses. It may also be something a person does. Grossmann (2017), for example, argues that wise reasoning varies substantially across situations. Someone may reason wisely in one context and poorly in another. Wise reasoning can involve intellectual humility, recognition of uncertainty and change, considering multiple perspectives, and trying to integrate competing interests. Importantly, excessive self-focus may interfere with these processes, while psychological distancing or ego-decentering can sometimes improve reasoning about personally meaningful problems.

That finding opens an interesting door to Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, or ACT.

ACT is a behavioral therapy focused on developing psychological flexibility. Rather than trying to eliminate difficult thoughts and emotions, ACT teaches people to relate to them differently. Its core processes include acceptance, cognitive defusion, present-moment awareness, self-as-context, values clarification, and committed action.

The basic idea is that psychological suffering is often made worse when people become rigidly fused with thoughts, avoid uncomfortable emotions, or organize their lives around trying to control internal experiences. Psychological flexibility instead involves staying in contact with what is happening while choosing behavior that is consistent with what matters (Levin et al., 2024).

ACT has accumulated a substantial empirical literature. Reviews and meta-analyses generally find that ACT performs better than inactive controls, waitlists, and treatment-as-usual conditions across a range of psychological and health problems. At the same time, ACT has not consistently demonstrated superiority over established forms of cognitive behavioral therapy, an important limitation when interpreting the evidence (A-Tjak et al., 2015; Gloster et al., 2020).

Interestingly, many ACT processes closely resemble capacities that appear repeatedly in wisdom research. Cognitive defusion, for example, involves learning to experience thoughts as thoughts rather than automatically treating them as literal truths. That has obvious parallels with intellectual humility and ego-decentering. A person who can step back from the thought “I know exactly what is happening” may be more capable of considering alternative explanations.

Self-as-context relates similarly to perspective-taking. ACT encourages people to develop a broader observing perspective on their experiences rather than becoming completely identified with whatever thought or emotion happens to be present. Wisdom research likewise emphasizes the ability to move beyond a narrow, self-centered viewpoint and consider situations from multiple perspectives (Grossmann, 2017; Grossmann et al., 2020).

Acceptance also overlaps with wisdom research's emphasis on uncertainty. Wise reasoning does not necessarily mean finding certainty. In many situations, no perfectly correct answer exists. Wisdom may involve recognizing what we know, recognizing what we do not know, and still making a thoughtful decision. ACT trains a similar willingness to act without first requiring uncomfortable uncertainty, fear, doubt, or sadness to disappear.

Emotion regulation is another point of convergence. Several wisdom models include the ability to regulate emotions without being dominated by them (Bangen et al., 2013; Jeste & Lee, 2019). ACT approaches this less through direct emotional control and more through acceptance and flexible responding. The goal is not emotional suppression. It is the ability to experience emotion without automatically allowing it to dictate behavior.

Values create another fascinating connection, although this is also where the two traditions begin to diverge. ACT asks people to identify personally meaningful directions and organize behavior around them. Wisdom research, especially the common wisdom model proposed by Grossmann and colleagues (2020), is more explicitly normative. It includes concerns such as balancing one's own interests with others' interests, recognizing shared humanity, integrating competing perspectives, and pursuing truth.

That difference is important. Psychological flexibility is not the same as wisdom. A person could theoretically become highly skilled at tolerating discomfort, defusing from thoughts, and pursuing personally chosen goals while still behaving selfishly, arrogantly, or destructively. ACT helps answer the question, “How can I act more flexibly in accordance with what matters to me?” Wisdom research asks an additional question: “Am I reasoning about what matters in a mature, truthful, and socially responsible way?” This suggests that psychological flexibility may be one ingredient of wisdom, but not sufficient for wisdom on its own.

The relationship between wisdom and well-being also fits surprisingly well with ACT. It would be tempting to assume that wiser people are simply happier, but the data are not that tidy. Glück, Weststrate, and Scherpf (2022) found that the relationship between wisdom and well-being was not simply linear. Very high wisdom rarely appeared alongside very low well-being, but people could report high well-being without necessarily displaying high wisdom. That distinction makes intuitive sense. Happiness and wisdom are not interchangeable.

ACT takes a similar stance toward emotional well-being. Its primary goal is not to maximize positive emotion or eliminate negative emotion. A psychologically flexible person may willingly experience grief, anxiety, fear, uncertainty, or embarrassment because doing so serves something deeply important.

Wisdom may involve something similar. Sometimes the wiser response is not the most comfortable response. It may involve accepting an unpleasant truth, acknowledging uncertainty, admitting error, or recognizing that multiple perspectives contain legitimate concerns. Taken together, the two research traditions suggest an interesting possibility. ACT may help cultivate several psychological capacities that make wise reasoning easier: stepping back from thoughts, tolerating uncertainty, remaining open to difficult emotion, becoming less dominated by immediate self-interest, clarifying values, and acting deliberately.

Wisdom research adds another layer. It asks how we use those capacities when navigating complex questions involving competing interests, uncertainty, other people, moral responsibility, and the limits of our own knowledge.

A rough conceptual pathway might look something like this: Mindfulness and decentering may support psychological flexibility. Psychological flexibility may create better conditions for thoughtful reasoning. Thoughtful reasoning, combined with humility, perspective-taking, concern for others, and sensitivity to context, may increase the likelihood of wise action. But that remains a theoretical synthesis, not a demonstrated causal chain.

One of the clearest research gaps is that the wisdom and ACT literatures appear to have developed mostly alongside one another rather than directly testing their relationship. Within the current evidence base reviewed here, little direct research asks whether ACT increases validated measures of wisdom or wise reasoning.

That would be a fascinating next step. Researchers could examine whether changes in psychological flexibility, cognitive defusion, acceptance, or self-as-context predict improvements in intellectual humility, perspective-taking, uncertainty tolerance, or integrative judgment.

For now, the most defensible conclusion is simpler. Wisdom research and ACT are not studying the same construct, but they appear to describe overlapping aspects of mature psychological functioning. ACT focuses heavily on how we relate to our thoughts, emotions, values, and behavior. Wisdom research focuses more heavily on how we use those capacities to reason well in complicated situations involving uncertainty, other people, competing interests, and moral consequences. Psychological flexibility may help us become less trapped by our own minds. Wisdom may help us decide what to do once we are free enough to see the situation more clearly.

References

A-Tjak, J. G. L., Davis, M. L., Morina, N., Powers, M. B., Smits, J. A. J., & Emmelkamp, P. M. G. (2015). A meta-analysis of the efficacy of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for clinically relevant mental and physical health problems. Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, 84, 30–36. https://doi.org/10.1159/000365764

Bangen, K. J., Meeks, T. W., & Jeste, D. V. (2013). Defining and assessing wisdom: A review of the literature. American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, 21(12), 1254–1266. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jagp.2012.11.020

Dong, M., Weststrate, N. M., & Fournier, M. A. (2023). Thirty years of psychological wisdom research: What we know about the correlates of an ancient concept. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 18(4), 778–811. https://doi.org/10.1177/17456916221114096

Gloster, A. T., Walder, N., Levin, M. E., Twohig, M. P., & Karekla, M. (2020). The empirical status of acceptance and commitment therapy: A review of meta-analyses. Journal of Contextual Behavioral Science, 18, 181–192. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcbs.2020.09.009

Glück, J., Weststrate, N. M., & Scherpf, A. (2022). Looking beyond linear: A closer examination of the relationship between wisdom and wellbeing. Journal of Happiness Studies, 23, 3285–3313. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-022-00540-3

Grossmann, I. (2017). Wisdom in context. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 12(2), 233–257. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691616672066

Grossmann, I., Weststrate, N. M., Ardelt, M., Brienza, J. P., Dong, M., Ferrari, M., Fournier, M. A., Hu, C. S., Nusbaum, H. C., & Vervaeke, J. (2020). The science of wisdom in a polarized world: Knowns and unknowns. Psychological Inquiry, 31(2), 103–133. https://doi.org/10.1080/1047840X.2020.1750917

Jeste, D. V., & Lee, E. E. (2019). Emerging empirical science of wisdom: Definition, measurement, neurobiology, longevity, and interventions. Harvard Review of Psychiatry, 27(3), 127–140. https://doi.org/10.1097/HRP.0000000000000205

Levin, M. E., Krafft, J., & Twohig, M. P. (2024). An overview of research on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. Psychiatric Clinics of North America, 47(2), 419–431. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psc.2024.02.007

Staudinger, U. M., & Glück, J. (2011). Psychological wisdom research: Commonalities and differences in a growing field. Annual Review of Psychology, 62, 215–241. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.121208.131659