Abdo Elnakouri on the Search for Truth and Knowledge
Abdo Elnakouri is a PhD student in the Social Psychology program at the University of Waterloo, working with Dr. Igor Grossman, Dr. Abby Scholer, and Dr. Ian McGregor. Abdo completed his BA at University of Ottowa and his MA at University of Waterloo. Much of his research is focused on self-regulation, meaning, and ideology—oriented toward gaining a better understanding of how people’s mundane, everyday goals work to subtly shape their broader moral, political, and religious commitments. He has earned multiple research-oriented graduate level scholarships and awards, including for his work in the science of existential psychology.
By Kenneth Vail, Cleveland State University. September 17, 2021.
ISSEP: How did you first become aware of and interested in existentialism and existential psychology?
Carvaggio’s painting of Saint Jerome Writing (1605-06); Ernest Becker’s Denial of Death (1973); HBO series Band of Brothers (2001) and its companion The Pacific (2010); and a hospice volunteer comforting a patient.
Abdo Elnakouri: I first became aware of existentialism in my undergraduate studies. I took a social/personality psychology course in which the instructor focused on some existentialist thinkers, such as Martin Heidegger, Rollo May, and so on. Around the same time, I also read Ernest Becker’s Denial of Death (1973) and it struck a chord. Whether or not death is the worm at the core of all our motivations, it certainly has an important impact on our plans, ambitions, thoughts, fears, and insecurities. So that got me thinking about the “deeper” questions and led me to learn about terror management theory, the meaning maintenance model, and the threat and defense literature more broadly, which is what made me want to go to graduate school in social psychology.
Aside from those more non-conscious existential concerns about death, I also got really interested in the effects of direct encounters with death where it’s more clearly in our conscious awareness. I’m from Egypt, and I go back sometimes, and have friends who were there during the political revolution and protests and they had a lot of direct encounters with death. And I’d been watching that HBO series Band of Brothers (2001), and its companion The Pacific (2010), and it was interesting to think about the human drama—it was just super intense, with death around every corner. And I had read the philosophers, and stoics, and heard the anecdotes of people who put skulls next to their beds and on their desks so they would always be reminded that we die.
While I was going through a period of personal development, when I came to grad school, I thought it would be a good idea if I kept death closeby, too. So, I started volunteering for hospice care and attending vigils. Sometimes, when people are dying, their family can’t be there, or the family is en route but hasn’t arrived yet, or they’re there but need to take a breather and step out for a bit; and they don’t want their loved one to be alone, so I step in and spend time face-to-face with this dying person. It’s been incredibly humbling and caused me to think much more deeply about the beauty of life, what we choose to value and where we find meaning in life, and the decisions we make while we’re here.
ISSEP: You’ve done some thinking about social isolation and privileged knowledge. Can you tell us more about that?
Abdo Elnakouri: Sure! I’d been reading Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Will to Power (1901) and in that work he took aim at the inherent value of truth and knowledge as a sacred ideal in and of itself. Instead, he argued that truth and knowledge are essentially social tools which people can use to meaningfully achieve other motivational goals. That got me thinking about the social value of the unique possession of important information.
One useful metaphor is the secrecy that often surrounds good recipes. Many of us can probably relate to knowing that one person in the family—in mine, it’s grandma—who has that special recipe. Maybe it’s been passed down generations, or maybe they developed it themselves, but it’s phenomenal! No doubt the world would be a better place if everyone had access to that recipe, right? If it’s truly such a delicious thing, then why not give it to everyone and improve the lives of millions of people, right? But if you ask grandma to share the recipe, she’ll tell you it’s her most heavily guarded secret!
Nietzsche might suggest that this secret recipe, this privileged culinary knowledge known only to her, is more than a list of ingredients and cooking instructions—it’s also a tool through which she can achieve her will to occupy a place of social value in her family or community. If everyone had it, and you could just make it on your own now, then grandma loses a bit of her relevance and social connections. But when she’s the only one who can make it, people hold her in esteem as the valued arbiter of “the recipe” and they seek her advice on other seemingly mysterious culinary topics as she may have some other unique secrets to reveal.
Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Will to Power (1901); Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdős; and Gregory House, played by Hugh Laurie.
Other similar examples abound. For example, Hungarian Paul Erdős dedicated his life to mathematics and was apparently uniquely gifted at cracking unsolved problems. His unique talents and knowledge earned him so much respect among his colleagues that he didn’t have a permanence residence—his colleagues hosted him in their homes, where he authored math papers together with them, and then he would move on to the next colleagues’ home. In all, he had over 500 collaborators on over 1,500 published papers. In another example, the television show House MD (2004-12) featured a cantankerous doctor, Gregory House, played by Hugh Laurie. House’s grouchy personality might have left him isolated and irrelevant, if not for his uniquely brilliant medical expertise which meant he could make meaningful contributions, command respect, and maintain a place of social value in the medical community.
The point is that people may place a high value on having some sort of privileged, unique, and perhaps even secret knowledge because claims to secret truths can be an important tool for maintaining a sense of social relevance and connection.
ISSEP: Your research recently tested those ideas—what did the data have to say about it?
Abdo Elnakouri: Yes, I’ve run a variety of studies on the topic now, and we’ve examined the research question with a few different methodological approaches.
The basic idea is that privileged knowledge can typically make people feel good about themselves, as though they now uniquely possess something of social value. So, in our first study to test that idea, we randomly assigned participants to either (1) think about something that you know and other people know, or (2) think about something that you know but other people don’t know. Then we measured self-esteem. Indeed, data patterns showed that when we prompted people to think about their secret knowledge, they felt better about themselves.
In subsequent studies, we flipped the idea on its head. So, if privileged knowledge helps to address existential concerns, especially conveying social value and promoting connection, then increasing the awareness of existential concern (esp. social isolation) should strengthen one’s interest in privileged (vs. common) truth. To test that idea, we manipulated the awareness of various existential threat such as mortality salience or social isolation (vs. baseline control conditions) and then measured how much people wanted to learn philosophical truths and scientific knowledge (1) if it were available to everyone (common truth) vs. (2) if it were available only to them (privileged truth). When we prompted people to think about existential threat, especially social isolation, participants expressed a stronger desire to learn privileged truths that would be available only to themselves.
ISSEP: In what ways does your research help us make sense of important human experiences or cultural trends?
Clockwise from top left: Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist (1988); Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret (2006); and conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh, seen here introducing U.S. President Donald Trump at a rally in 2018.
Abdo Elnakouri: It’s helps inform so much of what we see happening in the world!
First and foremost, it helps us better understand normal, healthy existential motivations in the search for meaningful information. All of us have questions and uncertainties about the world, and we want to know the answers; and we also want to feel socially valued, respected, and able to make contributions to the people around us. So, we can totally relate to stories like Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist (1988) in which an Andalusian shepherd boy, Santiago, has questions about the meaning of a recurring dream so he consults people with claims to privileged knowledge—a Gypsy fortune teller who claims to decipher prophesies, an old king who suggests his “personal legend” awaits him in Egypt, and an alchemist. Along the way, Santiago (and the reader) becomes aware of some secret truths—that money is merely a tool and not of principal importance, that true love is an enduring source of strength, and that realizing one’s “true self” is the greatest treasure in life.
We see similar phenomena with the success of the self-help industry. For example, Rhonda Byrne literally titled her film and book The Secret (2006) and claimed to have privileged knowledge about the key to happiness. Despite being unscientific esoterica and magical thinking, the material appealed to our deeper existential motivations—to pull back the curtain and learn some unique and potentially valuable information—and, as a result, the film was a box office success and the book has sold over 30 million copies in over 50 languages!
Outside of those more mainstream motivations, this same process also seems to help explain some of the partisan divide and gridlock we see in politics lately. The rapidly expanded availability of information from the internet, in an environment teeming with existential threats, has driven citizens searching for the “hidden truth” about the world. Accordingly, tremendous social value and relevance is given to commentators, pundits, and politicians who claim to have some privileged knowledge about how it all works and how it all should work. That can help explain the appeal of conservative talk radio hosts, such as the late Rush Limbaugh. As one observer (Matzko, 2020) noted, Limbaugh “Makes you feel like an insider — like you know what’s going on politically, and everyone else is an idiot. There is power in that feeling, the proposition that you and the radio elect have been awakened to a hidden truth about the real way the world works while the rest of the American ‘sheeple’ slumber.” Of course, the problem is that the “secret truths” he offered were often conspiratorial, callous and inhumane, and intensified political divisions for a generation.
ISSEP: What do you think are some important next steps toward better understanding the role of existential concerns in the search for truth and knowledge?
Abdo Elnakouri: I think there’s much to learn about how different types of unique truth might be more or less attractive. For example, I suspect people might place a higher premium on gaining privileged knowledge about things that bear an abstract social or cultural value—information that unlocks mysteries about how the world works, or that singles you out as a unique cultural master. This might be why we pay so much attention to grandma’s secret family recipe, or Rush Limbaugh’s claims to know how the political world “really” works, or Rhonda Byrne’s claim to know the secret to happiness.
In contrast, people might not care very much about having privileged information about concrete information with little or no apparent social or cultural value. If we had a chance to interact with God in heaven, or the world’s most learned philosopher or wisest monk, we’d be pretty disappointed if the secret they shared with us was some banal minutia, like revealing that the wave shaped blob of toothpaste is called a “nurdle.” That would explain why it’s so humorously underwhelming when, in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1979), a race of hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional beings create a supercomputer named “Deep Thought,” give it the task of discovering the answer to the “ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything,” and after 7.5 million years of intense calculations it announces the answer is… 42! An answer so concrete it’s devoid of any discernible abstract meaning.
Another interesting area would be to study the appeal of information that is either (a) abstract and privileged, or (b) practical but common. Such differences were explored by Thorstein Bunde Veblen, a late 19th century sociologist, in his book The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899). He argued that hardship and concrete difficulties drive the appeal of practical information, even if it were more common or “lower” educational information. In contrast, he argues that being sheltered from such challenges means they can indulge the privilege of more abstract or “higher” educational information which may or may not bear any immediate practical utility. This might help explain why people are sometimes interested in specific applications of commonly available ideas (e.g., a “how-to” tutorial), whereas other times they might be more interested in more leisurely exploring unique esoterica or even basic science research.
ISSEP: You’ve attended, and presented research at, our Existential Psychology Preconferences; how has your experience been with those?
Abdo Elnakouri: The conference was such a fun and intellectually stimulating experience! I know it was just the first year of the preconference [2019], but it was packed and there were so many great speakers. I remember Rebecca Schlegel gave this great talk about her research on the authentic self, and Aaron Kay spoke about his compensatory control research. Also, there was just so much variety. Sometimes conferences can get a little monotonous, when all the talks are on the same topics. But the existential psychology preconference was set up so it still had this common theme, but did such a great job of exploring it from different angles, and mixing up the format throughout the day. It was super interesting all day long.
I also really appreciated that ISSEP offered such great funding support. I won one of the diversity travel awards and it was super helpful; it also definitely sent an inclusive signal that young researchers like myself are welcome and supported as valued members of this exciting field of research.
My poster presentation was also productive. The atmosphere was friendly and I had some great conversations with people who visited my poster station. Some of them offered constructive suggestions that actually caused me to adjust the way I designed my subsequent studies, to explore the specificity of the present effects to privileged (vs. common) truths. I really benefited from going and would recommend others check it out, too!
ISSEP: What is one piece of advice you would give to future students who have an interest in following in your footsteps?
“First, try to focus on something you’re passionately interested in...
Second, read broadly!”
Abdo Elnakouri: First, try to focus on something you’re passionately interested in. Working in this field means remaining focused on specific topics for long periods of time—weeks, months, years, decades—and sometimes that can be a really long slog, and you can easily get sick and tired of a project. So it’s helpful if it’s something that you can be excited about even after it’s the 47-thousanth time you’ve thought about it.
Second, read broadly! Many of my ideas come from books or subjects that are far away from social psychology. Especially if you’re in undergraduate now, try to read as widely as possible with an eye toward existential psychological concerns—that might mean reading the psych literature, but it also means reading philosophy, history, politics, fiction, songs and poetry, thinking about visual and performing arts, and on and on. The whole world is a well-spring of ideas that can help give you ideas, stimulate your research programs to test those ideas in creative ways, and help you better understand the way people handle their existential concerns.
ISSEP: Can you tell us a little about yourself outside the research context?
Abdo Elnakouri: I think I’m a pretty typical “openness to experience” type academic. I like to travel and explore new cities and parks, meet new people, and think about new ideas.
I played for my high school rugby team in Ottowa, and that was fun. We’d go to this big tournament in Kingston, which was sometimes pretty intense but always a good time. I don’t play much in the way of sports nowadays, because of grad school, but I do like watching basketball.
Another thing I like to do is check out films, music, and audiobooks and podcasts. After a long day of actively reading and writing, I’m still interested in creative new stuff but kind of need a mental breather. So it’s nice to be able to more passively engage things. I like the human interest arthouse films like Boyhood (2014), and big epic tales like the Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001-03). I also like staying engaged with ideas, so that usually means listening to Audible audiobooks, checking out The Great Courses series, TED Talks, Talks at Google, and Politics and Prose features.
ISSEP: A lot of us like to listen to music in the lab; what are you listening to lately?
Abdo Elnakouri: I started off listening to a lot of rock, then more angsty stuff in high school, then more into rap, hip hop, and trance like Aarmin van Buuren and Andrew Rayel. More recently I’m back into more R&B and hip-hop; I really like the stuff coming out of Toronto like Drake, The Weeknd, that sort of thing.
I also really like music low on lyrics and high on musical richness, especially when I’m working, so film scores and other more emotional and momentous compositions. Some of the composers I listen to the most are Tony Anderson, Ludovico Einaudi, Zach Hemsey, Hans Zimmer, and Max Richter.
Outside of that, another great artist is Tom Day. He creates compositions that use a lot of ambient sounds, like he’ll go to the forest and use the sound of birds or a river, or he’ll record in a busy street, or in an airport with announcements about flights on the PA, and stuff like that. It’s good instrumental music with a feel for everyday life outside of a studio. Some of my other favorites are Calvin Harris, Hazem Beltagui, and We Are All Astronauts.