16 & In Love
The scenario that I have chosen to depict the five components of wise judgment is a sixteen year old girl is “in love” with her 17 year old boyfriend, who is continually pushing her to have sex promising that they will be “protected” from the condom so that she will not get pregnant. This scenario is a prime example of the five components of wise judgment. In this paper I will explain how they apply and can be used to make a rational decision of whether the girl should or should not have sex.
Component one of wise judgment depicts factual knowledge concerning matters of life including but not limited to human nature, interpersonal relations and social norms. With this scenario component one is self evident. The scenario depicts a teenage girl and her boyfriend, which would be an interpersonal relationship, the factual knowledge in it is they are in love and her boyfriend promises to have safe protected sex. It is human nature to want to have sex with a person that they love and have been with, him promising to have protected sex relates to a matter in life, where as young women are worried about getting pregnant. Her boyfriend encouraging her to have sex is a social norm; young society today believes that it is normal for a boyfriend and girlfriend to engage in sexual activities.
With our second component of knowledge being Procedural knowledge one must elaborate upon the story to apply it. Procedural knowledge” involves strategies for dealing with life’s problems, weighing goals, methods of handling conflict and ways of offering advice.” (Baltes & Staudinger, 2000)With our definition of Procedural knowledge and the scenario we can interpret many different things that would apply this second rule of wise judgment. If the teenage girl didn’t want to have sex she would be trying to think of a way to tell her boyfriend without losing him, her goals could be that she doesn’t want to have sex but wants to find a way to tell him so as not to...