Features of everyday conceptions of a "wise person" were examined, based on a model of wisdom-related knowledge (Baltes & Smith, 1990). The goal was to examine whether the psychological theory underlying this model is consistent with lay conceptions of wisdom, and whether everyday conceptions contain additional features not contained in the theory. The model advanced treats wisdom as a body of expert knowledge in the fundamental pragmatics of life. A major question is whether such a knowledge-based approach ignores other facets more closely tied to personality, interpersonal skills, and emotional maturity. One hundred women professionals recruited through a newspaper advertisement who were young, middle-aged, or older, rated 131 descriptive characteristics on a 7-point Likert-type scale on the degree to which each represented their notion of an ideally wise person. Three interrelated sets of findings were obtained. First, characteristics consistent with the psychological theory of wisdom as expert knowledge were seen as highly typical attributes of a wise person. In addition, social-personality-type characteristics emerged as highly typical. Thus, the lay conception of a wise person contains both knowledge and social-personality components. Second, the lay conception of a wise person enjoys a good deal of social consensus. Third, while there were no structural differences among profiles associated with age/cohort, some mean differences in typicality ratings were found. Older women, in comparison to middle-aged and younger adults, rated more peripheral social-personality characteristics as more typical. Ratings of typicality for core features did not show age/cohort effects. (Author/ABL)