Igor Grossmann, PhD

We keep asking how people become wiser. What would it take for our institutions to do the same? New essay + the On Wisdom series finale 👇 📝 Essay: igorgrossmann.substack.com/p/a-wiser-so... 🎧 Episode: www.onwisdompodcast.com/73 w Dilip Jeste, Justin Brienza, Barry Schwartz

Igor Grossmann, PhD reposted

Replying to @onwisdompodcast.bsky.social

They join @igi.bsky.social Charles Cassidy to explore why getting older or going through difficult experiences doesn't necessarily make us wiser, and can we take what we know about individual wisdom and use it to build wiser organizations and societies?

Many talks r entirely genAI generated today. OK... But hearing a person becoming a bot, an "emissary" of the genAI-generated script.. where NOTHING sounds like a human talk... Is is worth it? & Can I force myself to sit through such a presentation? Questions for a brave new world we live in today.

I’ve studied wisdom for 20 years. I still lose arguments, maximize over impossible choices, & get hijacked by my own emotions. Why is wisdom so easy when it’s someone else’s problem, and so hard when it’s our own? New essay + On Wisdom Ep. 72 out now. 🧵👇 igorgrossmann.substack.com/p/wisdom-is-...

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Finally, Kristján Kristjánsson bridges psychology and Aristotelian phronesis (practical wisdom): how children graduate from moral habits around age 8–10 when virtues clash (e.g., honesty vs. compassion), and why institutions need collective phronesis in teams.

Listen to the full conversation with Charles Cassidy, Judith Glück, Ethan Kross, and Kristján Kristjánsson: 🎧 Podcast: onwisdompodcast.com/72 📖 Substak essay & full transcript: igorgrossmann.substack.com/p/wisdom-is-...

To unlock wise reasoning under stress, you need a mental timeout. Ethan Kross breaks down self-distancing: shifting from "I" to your own name, temporal time-travel, expressive writing, and outsourcing distance to other people to shift from recounting to reframing.

A twist on #SolomonParadox: when colleagues tried to replicate our US finding in China, it only showed up among highly independent people. For interdependent populations who integrate others into the self by default, the self-other reasoning gap disappears.

First, let’s dismantle two myths with data: - "With age comes wisdom". Meta-analytic correlation? R = 0.04. - "What does not kill you make you wiser". Longitudinal data shows no clear pattern. Without active regulation, adversity breeds defensiveness and cynicism, not wisdom.

If experience isn't enough, what works? Judith Glück explains the Integrative Model of Wise Behavior: you can have high cognitive wisdom (intellectual humility, perspective-taking), but if you’re angry or chasing ego-driven goals, those capacities get locked out. State vs. trait.

Igor Grossmann, PhD reposted

Replying to @onwisdompodcast.bsky.social

@igi.bsky.social and Charles Cassidy confront a fundamental question about what a wisdom score is actually telling us, and discover that the answer may be less about choosing between traits and states than understanding how they fit together.

New On Wisdom episode is out. Tune in! igorgrossmann.substack.com/p/71-special...

Another substack post on the challenges of measuring wisdom and related high-level mental processes. igorgrossmann.substack.com/p/wise-until...

Igor Grossmann, PhD reposted

Episode 2 of On Wisdom's five-part special series is live! This week features a discussion on Metacognition and Judgment with hosts Igor Grossmann and Charles Cassidy. They are joined by guests Gord Pennycook, Steve Fleming, and Thomas Costello. 🎧Listen here: www.onwisdompodcast.com/70

Igor Grossmann, PhD reposted

What does it actually take to think wisely? On Wisdom digs into the empirical science of wisdom, judgment, and decision-making, and what it means for how we live. 🎧 Listen across Fireside, Apple Podcasts, and more here: www.onwisdompodcast.com

You’ve been thinking about it (or at least your chatbot has). But are you getting anywhere? igorgrossmann.substack.com/p/youve-been...

We're hiring research engineers, research associates & several postdocs at the Wisdom & Culture Lab @UWaterloo to build experiments, tools & models on how AI shapes human reasoning, decisions & culture. Psych, cogsci, ML/NLP, HCI & eng backgrounds welcome. uwaterloo.ca/wisdom-and-c...

igorgrossmann.substack.comWhat Is Wisdom in an Age of Infinite Answers?Folk wisdom and inherited stories in the age of AI

What Is Wisdom in an Age of Infinite Answers? igorgrossmann.substack.com/p/what-is-wi...

Job-market season hot take: Ivy League + R1 schools (yes, Michigan and Stanford, looking at you 2) should stop requiring recommendation letters from all faculty applicants. I beg you, ask at shortlist stage! Otherwise you’re wasting everyone’s time, & incentivizing AI-slop letters. What’s the point?

igorgrossmann.substack.com/p/searching-...

igorgrossmann.substack.comSearching for an Intellectual AtlantisHow a Viennese café led me here

igorgrossmann.substack.comSubscribe to No Easy AnswersExploring how we think, disagree, and act when the world resists easy answers. Click to read No Easy Answers, by Igor Grossmann, a Substack publication. Launched 34 minutes ago.

No Easy Answers - Decided to start a Substack in conjunction with the new @onwisdom.bsky.social special series on navigating uncertainty, technological, political, personal... Irony in arriving rather late here: Waterloo alumni helped create this platform. igorgrossmann.substack.com/subscribe?pa...

igorgrossmann.substack.comSearching for an Intellectual AtlantisHow a Viennese café led me here

First post is here: igorgrossmann.substack.com/p/searching-...

What do we miss when the science of judgment & decision-making mostly begins in adulthood? A new Psych Inquiry target article by Santhanagopalan, @bskybymidge.bsky.social , Risen & Kinzler argues that childhood should be central (vs. supplemental) to JDM. doi.org/10.1080/1047...

Loreen Tisdall & Rui Mata ask what a genuinely developmental science of JDM requires. Tess Wild & @loeckenhoff.bsky.social broaden the lens across the life span. Liqi Zhu & Xiaosong Gai foreground construct validation across childhood.

tandfonline.comPsychological InquiryPsychological Inquiry publishes challenging theoretical work to advance psychology and the study of personality and social psychology.

Finally, Santhanagopalan, @bskybymidge.bsky.social , Risen & Kinzler respond. The larger question running through the issue: What would theories of human judgment look like if development were built in from the start? www.tandfonline.com/journals/hpl...

Are developing minds simply “biases in the making”? @simyciri.bsky.social, Tomás Lejarraga & Ralph Hertwig argue for a different way of thinking about development. @arc-mpib.bsky.social @mpib-berlin.bsky.social @mgummerum.bsky.social & Yaniv Hanoch ask how small choices can shape big futures.

The conversation expands further: Tehila Kogut, Shaul Shalvi & Yoella Bereby-Meyer → social & moral decisions Michal Maimaran → children in the marketplace Oana Stanciu & Azzurra Ruggeri → building an integrated developmental JDM

Across a decade of SJDM programs, research with children appeared in only 0.1% of talks and posters. The authors propose an Origins of Judgment and Decision-Making (OJDM) framework. 10 commentaries take up the challenge ↓

Nadia Chernyak asks what developmental science can reveal about cultural input vs. core cognitive competencies. Shoham Choshen-Hillel & Tom Gordon-Hecker extend the question to the origins of moral judgment and decision-making.

14 Sept

The @onwisdompodcast special lineup: 01 Legare · McAdams · Paul 02 Pennycook · Costello · Fleming 03 Glück · Ardelt · Jayawickreme 04 Glück · Kross · Kristjánsson 05 Jeste · Schwartz · Brienza Five episodes, built on a new Annual Review of Psychology doi.org/10.1146/annu...

uwaterloo.caJob Ad! WAC lab is searching for a Research Project Manager | Wisdom and Culture Lab | University of WaterlooJob Ad! WAC lab is searching for a Research Project Manager for Cultural Narratives, Economic Games, & Decision-making project.

25 Aug

We’re hiring! Wisdom & Culture Lab @uwaterloo.ca seeks a Research Project Manager for a 12+ country project on cultural narratives, economic games & decision-making, via Wise Judgment Consortium. Please apply/share! 👇 uwaterloo.ca/wisdom-and-c... #AcademicJobs #ResearchJobs #CulturalPsychology

jespinosa.bsky.socialJulia Espinosa (@jespinosa.bsky.social)Postdoc in comparative psychology, biology, & neuroscience @YorkU & @Harvard | Studying the nature & nurture shaping social behaviour in diverse dog populations 🐩🐕🐕‍🦺 | #ManyDogs Founder & Co-Director...

24 July

Concern with WEIRD cultures and behaviours does not only concern humans. It gets much worse when we look at the animal models and the study of non-human animal cognition, affect, and behavior. Incredibly proud of @jespinosa.bsky.social and colleagues for making this provocative, needed argument.

Association for Psychological Science@psychscience.bsky.social

Would a dog in New York City respond in the same way as a dog in Kyoto? @jespinosa.bsky.social and colleagues address how studies on domestic dogs tend to focus on a Westernized subset.

psychologicalscience.orgCanine Science Is Biased Toward the Western WorldA new study addresses how studies on domestic dogs tend to focus on a Westernized subset.

19 July

Presenting at #ECP22 in Edinburgh: Wed 16:45 (Salisbury): Multilingual Topic Modeling for Cross-Cultural Research (for Y. Li who can't come due to visa). Thu 11:00 (St Trinnean): Intellectual humility & forecast accuracy. DM to connect. #CrossCulturalPsychology #Forecasting #Intellectualhumility

16 June

An AI babysitter for humanity, or an AI toddler we want to nurture? One of many questions at last month's Dagstuhl seminar on Social AI, hosted by @lucie-nlp.bsky.social @tomerullman.bsky.social , @maartensap.bsky.social & @jennhu.bsky.social 🧵

16 June

2/ The premise was open: what kind of social AI do we actually want, and do we want it at all? Nothing off the table. Camel and dog social intelligence. Hive minds. Trisolarans...

16 June

3/ The one I keep returning to: a system that can mask its own abilities well enough that we can no longer test/ benchmark for them... A genuinely fun and intellectually stimulating crowd. Perhaps, "social" selected for a very social type of bunch of open-minded scholars.

After three months on the road, I'm finally putting the bags down for a bit — Freiburg, for the next month, on an Alexander von Humboldt Research Award. A short thread on landing here 🧵

The work: metacognitive foundations of judgment under uncertainty, forecasting, and cultural evolution. The road here ran through Konstanz (CASCB, hosted by Wolfgang Gaissmaier) and St. Gallen (IBT-HSG, hosted by Tobias Ebert).

If you're in Freiburg or nearby and want to talk #wisdom, #metacognition, social psychology, #AI, or anything adjacent — I'm around all month. Coffee's on me. ☕

After three months on the road, I'm finally putting the bags down for a bit — Freiburg, for the next month, on an Alexander von Humboldt Research Award. A short thread on landing here 🧵

Two academic homes for the month: the Dept of Psychology at the University of Freiburg (with Christoph Klauer) and the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security & Law (hosted by Isa Thielmann).

journals.sagepub.comSage Journals: Discover world-class researchSubscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.

31 May

Can LLMs know what they don’t know? A paper by Steyvers & Peters offers a sharp empirical look at AI metacognition: how models track their own knowledge boundaries & communicate uncertainty, in the spirit of metacognitive sensitivity metrics. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

31 May

It connects with the core thesis of our recent @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social paper on “machine wisdom”. Our paper focuses more on the why: why AI systems need perspectival metacognition to become more robust, explainable, and safe. doi.org/10.1016/j.ti...

The broader point: intractable problems require metacognitive control over object-level strategies. AI alignment may depend not just on optimizing outputs, but on building systems that can reflect on their own limits, alternatives, and uncertainty. #AIalignment #metacognition

26 May

New paper with the amazing Eugene Ji & @amirhkarimi.bsky.social "Metacognition Should Be the Scientific Framework for Bounded and Effective Self-Governance in Generative AI" LINK: arxiv.org/abs/2605.23981 #metacognition #LLM #selfgovernance

23 May

A presto, Firenze. 🇮🇹 Spent May 2026 as a Visiting Fellow at the @eui-eu.bsky.social Robert Schuman Centre @eui-schuman.bsky.social, during EUI's 50th anniversary. Fiesole's hills, Renaissance Florence, and conversations on science for policy. Still processing it all.

23 May

2/ Grateful for visits with colleagues in Genoa, Milan & Lucca, connecting with the Italian Young Academy, and esp. GabyUmbach's hospitality and our exchanges on strengthening the evidential value of science in policy foresight, & the role of social scientists in the AI age.

23 May

3/ Bonus highlight: visits from several @UWaterloo psychology students. 🎓