The University of Chicago Center for Practical Wisdom is committed to the scientific study of wisdom. We apply science to understand wisdom and its role in the decisions and choices that affect everyday life.

WISDOM LIVESTREAM LECTURE: Dr. Emma Levine

Join us for our next Wisdom Livestream Lecture

on Friday Nov 13, 2026 at 3:30 pm CST by Dr. Emma Levine, the Charles M. Harper Professor of Behavioral Science at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

About the speaker: 

Emma Edelman Levine studies the psychology of altruism, trust, and ethical dilemmas. Her research seeks to understand how individuals make trade-offs between different values, and how this influences decision-making and social perception. Her main stream of research investigates the tension between honesty and benevolence. Using a variety of research methods, in both the laboratory and the field, Levine studies how individuals navigate this tension. Her research unearths specific circumstances in which people welcome and appreciate deception, as well as circumstances in which they underestimate the benefits of honesty.

About this wisdom livestream lecture:

A fruitful literature has examined the consequences of lying. However, lying is only one source of false information. Communicators engage in a broad set of complex behaviors that stretch the boundaries of honesty, including strategically avoiding information and presenting real, but misrepresentative information as truth. Though not lies per se, these are nonetheless deviations from honesty that have serious costs to organizations, consumers, and society broadly. In the present talk, I introduce a multidimensional framework of honesty that highlights how honesty encompasses more than the absence of lies—it has relational elements (e.g., fostering an accurate understanding in others through what we disclose and how we communicate) and intellectual elements (e.g., evaluating information for accuracy, searching for accurate information, and updating our beliefs accordingly; Cooper, Huppert, Cohen, Levine, & Fleeson, 2023). Then I present results from two ongoing empirical papers that examine how people make social judgments of these different facets of (dis)honesty. In the first paper (Wallace & Levine, under review), we examine reactions to false information stemming from biased beliefs (“bias”) versus lying (“dishonesty”). Five studies find that people are less likely to punish falsehoods from biased versus dishonest communicators, even when these processes are intentional and lead to identical harms. Increased punishment of dishonesty is driven, in part, by the belief that dishonest actors are less constrained by moral norms than (even intentionally) biased actors. In the second paper (Duncan, Levine, & Small, in progress), we examine reactions to marketing tactics that involve fabrication (inventing or producing false information) versus cherry-picking. Three studies find that people find fabrication to be more morally problematic than cherry-picking, even when cherry-picking misleads the audience to a greater extent. This work deepens our understanding of multiple facets of dishonesty, broadens the field’s understanding of reactions to corporate and consumer fraud, and sheds light on the challenges associated with punishing misinformation.

Register for the online event here.

SAVE THE DATE: WISDOM IN THE PULPIT

Join us for the summative conference of the "Preaching and Neuroscience" grant in September 2027!

Attend the final conference of the "Preaching and Neuroscience" grant with plenary speakers including our own Howard C. Nusbaum and John Veillette. Invited plenary speakers include N. T. Wright, Hoffman Ospino, and Ilia Delio.

This free conference is open to the public and will be hosted at the Catholic Theological Union, Chicago.

Registration opens in April 2027.

Read more here.

CAMPAIGN TO SUPPORT WISDOM RESEARCH STUDENTS!

This year, we’re strengthening our efforts to support student researchers in the Center for Practical Wisdom—and we’re launching a campaign to help fund their important work.

We know you value the work we do at the Center for Practical Wisdom. This campaign is one small but meaningful way to support our mission while helping train the next generation of researchers interested in understanding wisdom from a psychological and scientific perspective.

For the next six weeks, through the end of November, you can make a donation of any amount to the Center for Practical Wisdom. Every dollar raised will directly support our student researchers by helping cover the costs of their research, from participant fees and lab supplies to other essential research expenses.

Your donations will also help us provide hourly wages for our student researchers, allowing them to gain valuable research experience without having to choose between working in our labs and taking on other jobs to help cover their educational expenses.

And here’s how much your support can make a difference: If every person who receives our newsletter donated just $1 today, we would have enough to fund our student researchers for two years! That’s the power of a community coming together to support our students.

Make a Difference Today!

To donate directly to the Center for Practical Wisdom, visit the UChicago giving page and enter “Wisdom” in the “Area of Support” box.

Thank you for supporting our students and helping us advance the scientific study of wisdom!

Click here to donate today!

IT'S THE SMALL THINGS: Treating something as even slightly significant affects motivation

by Teal Burrell, Association for Psychological Science

When Fan Yang’s children came home complaining about a crafting class, they had a particularly strong advocate.

“They said, ‘They don’t let us take home our creations,’” Yang, a research associate professor at the University of Chicago recalled. “I almost emailed the teachers to send them our paper.”

Her paper, published in 2026 in Psychological Science, revealed how even something minimal—like saving artwork—makes a meaningful difference to motivation.

A lack of motivation in work or life can move from languishing and quitting to more serious issues like depression, suicidal ideations, and antisocial behavior. Having a sense of significance—that one’s life, work, or activities have value—can help provide meaning and incentive. However, because most research on significance focuses on careers and life as a whole, little is known about the impact of significance on small, everyday activities. Additionally, the need for meaning is often considered a luxury concern that is only relevant for some people and only later in life. But Yang thinks it’s more fundamental than that.

“It’s almost like air. We actually really need it,” she said. “In a lot of situations we don’t really notice because it’s already there.”

For the paper, Yang and Yilin Liu, now a doctoral student at the University of Texas at Dallas, performed four studies on 4–9-year-olds and adults to see if significance is a deeply rooted need starting early in life and whether minimal significance can have an effect...

Read more here.