ABSTRACT
What is the difference between spirituality and wisdom? Are spiritual older adults likely to be wise and wise elders likely to be spiritual, or are spirituality and wisdom two distinct attributes of individuals? Using a sample of 116 older community residents, 23 nursing home residents, and 19 hospice patients (age 56+) and multivariate OLS regression analyses, this study investigated the differential effects of spirituality and wisdom on spiritual behavior, psychological and subjective well-being, and attitudes toward death, controlling for demographic characteristics and subjective health. Results revealed that religious spirituality was unrelated to three-dimensional wisdom (consisting of the average of cognitive, reflective, and compassionate wisdom dimensions). Religious spirituality was positively associated with the frequency of spiritual behavior and had a curvilinear relationship with death anxiety and neutral and escape acceptance of death. Wisdom was positively related to mastery and negatively to death anxiety, death avoidance, and escape acceptance of death. Although both spirituality and wisdom were related to greater purpose in life and subjective well-being, the associations were significantly stronger for wisdom than for spirituality. Qualitative interviews with exemplars of high spirituality but relatively low wisdom and relatively high wisdom but low spirituality were analyzed to illustrate the quantitative findings. The results suggest that spirituality and wisdom have indeed differential effects and might provide two distinct pathways to aging well and dying well.
