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A few semesters into my teaching career as a psychology professor, I uncovered a cheating ring. I determined who the ringleader was and called him to my office.

He admitted that he had illicitly obtained a copy of the exam and shared it with other students. He began to cry, telling me he was from a single parent family, the first in his family to go to college, and that his mother would be crushed if he was dismissed from the university for academic dishonesty.

I did not know what to do. I was angry at what he had done, but I also felt sorry for his situation. For reasons I still don’t fully understand, I decided to call his mother. When I told her what he had done, she apologized repeatedly, then said coldly, “Let me speak to him.”

I don’t know what she said, but as the color drained from his face and he was reduced to repeatedly saying, “Yes, ma’am,” I assumed he was being read the riot act. After he hung up, he headed home to, I suspect, more severe punishment than the university could have given. He received a “0” on the exam and an official reprimand in his student file, but I’m willing to bet that the most important lesson he learned didn’t come from the university or me.

Though I didn’t yet know the word, the decision to call his mother was an example of phronesis, an ancient Greek word usually translated as “practical wisdom.” It refers to the ability to make good decisions in real-life situations, especially when there are no clear rules or easy answers.

Charioteer of the virtues, guiding them all

Phronesis provides you with the ability to deliberate well about what is good and bad in specific circumstances. Unlike theoretical knowledge (sophia) or technical skill (techne), phronesis is about judgment – how to choose the right action at the right time for the right reasons.

When you think about wisdom, maybe you imagine a philosopher pondering big questions or a scientist unlocking the secrets of the universe. But phronesis is a different kind of wisdom, one that is less about abstract ideas and more about navigating the messy, unpredictable realities of everyday life. Phronesis helps you live well, not by following rules, but by making wise choices in the face of complexity. It’s what allows you to turn knowledge into action that is then beneficial.

Phronesis is a central component of the virtue approach to character development and morality first described by Aristotle. Virtues like courage, generosity, justice and temperance tell you what goals you should aim for, but they don’t tell you how much, when or in what way you should act in a specific situation. Phronesis helps you think through and decide the right means to achieve the right ends in the moment.

Aristotle called phronesis “the charioteer of the virtues” because it provides the guidance system that ensures the other virtues are applied correctly in real life. As he put it, “It is impossible to be good in the strict sense without practical wisdom.”

Let’s take the example of courage. Everyone wants to be brave and stand up for their values. However, without phronesis, too much courage may become recklessness, or too little courage could result in cowardice. Phronesis allows you to know when to take a risk and when to hold back.

Or consider justice, the virtue of treating others fairly. Phronesis allows you to choose what is fair in a specific situation. Virtues set the goals – for instance, “be courageous” or “be just” – but phronesis determines the right way to achieve them.

Practice phronesis in the face of complexity

Developing phronesis takes time and effort. It requires experience, reflection and careful reasoning. Because phronesis is social, it thrives in environments where people share their perspectives and challenge each other’s assumptions.

You don’t have to be a philosopher or a scientist to practice phronesis. Modern life is full of complexity. We are regularly faced with questions that don’t have clear answers.

Picture a parent who must decide whether to enforce bedtime or allow a child to stay up for a special family occasion. The rule says bedtime is nonnegotiable, but practical wisdom reminds us of the value of shared family experiences.

Or consider a manager who notices an employee missing deadlines. Instead of simply reprimanding them, they might ask what’s going on and discover a family emergency. They could adjust expectations and offer support, balancing fairness with compassion.

These kinds of decisions reflect practical wisdom because they anticipate future needs, not just rules or consequences.

In a world obsessed with data and efficiency, phronesis reminds us that human judgment still matters. Algorithms can optimize processes, but they can’t weigh moral values or capture the subtleties of human relationships. Whether in education, health care, business or politics, decisions that affect lives require more than technical expertise. They require wisdom.

Phronesis counters the illusion that life’s problems have simple, one-size-fits-all solutions. It helps us realize that good judgment takes time, empathy and reflection. So, the next time you face a tough decision, pause and ask: What’s the wise thing to do?

Tim Hulsey, Associate Professor of Psychology, University of Tennessee

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Across the world, fans will soon be tuning in at all hours of the day and night to watch the Paris Olympics. In a world where on-demand media streaming is now increasingly the norm, sport is something of a rarity. It’s watched live, often with other people. The joy, or heartbreak, is shared.

Can something as simple as watching a sporting competition at the same time bring people closer together? In this episode of The Conversation Weekly podcast, we explore this question with a psychologist who studies the impact of shared experiences.

In his experimental psychology lab at the University of Tennessee, Garriy Shteynberg creates situations in which his test subjects go through an experience together. “We’re trying to amp up this feeling of shared experience or shared attention,” he explains. It could be watching a video together, something sad, or funny. Or asking people to work towards a goal, such as memorising a list of words.

The results suggest that, when compared to control conditions in which someone experiences something alone or at a slightly different time to others, the shared attention of experiencing something together amplifies the experience and can even give people more motivation to complete a task.

We found that if I give you a surprise test after the fact, if you co-experience the list of words, you’re better able to recall that list versus if you experience them alone. If we co-experience an emotional scene, we find that people feel more emotional … so if it’s a happy scene, people feel happier … if it’s a sad scene … people feel sadder. It amplifies whatever that stimulus is.

Collective mind

Shteynberg’s experiments led him to develop what he calls the theory of the collective mind.

The idea is that our individual minds not only track where we diverge, but they also track where we converge with others. When you create a collective mind, it’s as if the perspective broadens, it becomes a “we perspective”.

His own experience of immigrating to the US from the Soviet Union as a child influences Shteynberg’s thinking about collective perspectives.

In the Soviet Union, collective consciousness was emphasised all the time. In the United States, it’s quite the opposite. Most of the time, collective consciousness is something to be afraid of. It is something that put in the background. You want individual consciousness, individual reasoning. Both of those outlooks are mistaken in a way.

He argues that people have individual thoughts and experiences, and simultaneously, they also have collective ones. Both of those matter to how they experiences the world.

Shteynberg is now interested in whether shared experiences can also help bring people together, particularly in the context of increasing political polarisation.

Shared experiences form this minimal social connection that doesn’t require us to share identities, ideologies or even beliefs … The idea that we are in the same room together, that we might be watching the same news is an important social bridge upon which things can be built.

Shteynberg says that in many different ways, irrespective of their politics, people believe they share a basic experience with others, whether that’s how they live, work, or even watching something like the Olympics on TV.

I think the focus being on the deep division and that always being front and centre of our shared experience obscures the fact that we are in fact of collective mind to a great number of things.

To listen to the full interview with Garriy Shteynberg about his research, subscribe to The Conversation Weekly podcast, which also features Maggie Villiger, senior science editor at The Conversation in the US. You can also read an article Shteynberg wrote about his research on the collective mind.

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A transcript of this episode is available on Apple Podcasts.

Newsclips in this episode from BBC Sport.

This episode of The Conversation Weekly was written and produced by Katie Flood with assistance from Mend Mariwany. Sound design was by Eloise Stevens, and our theme music is by Neeta Sarl.

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Gemma Ware, Host, The Conversation Weekly Podcast, The Conversation

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.