Peter Helm is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Missouri. He earned his PhD and MA in Social Psychology at the University of Arizona and his BA in Psychology at the University of Vermont. Broadly, Peter’s interests revolve around the underlying existential motivations and consequences of human behavior and relationships, particularly in terms of death, isolation, and meaninglessness. Additionally, he’s interested in interpersonal relationships (e.g., attachment and loneliness) and social identity (e.g., gender expression and racial identity), and how variations in these processes affect our mental health and psychological equanimity.

Peter on the web: Facebook | LinkedIn | GoogleScholar | ResearchGate

By Kenneth Vail, Cleveland State University. August 10, 2021.

ISSEP: How did you first become aware of and interested in existentialism and existential psychology?

Peter Helm: In high school, I remember learning about John Locke and Thomas Hobbes ideas about the social contract and got really interested in the balance between freedom and responsibility. I took some philosophy courses and loved the insight into the human condition, but much of it just felt like guesswork with no way to know which ideas were true and which were false. Eventually, I took an AP psychology class and when we covered social psychology, I thought: Yes, this is what I’ve been looking for—a discipline studying the human experience, grounded in reality, with scientific studies designed to test ideas and uncover the truths of mental and social life.

Then as an undergrad at the University of Vermont, I took a Social Psychology course with Dr. Elizabeth Pinel, where I first encountered existential psychology. The more I learned about it, the more I was blown away by the research methods used to test the ideas; it was such a satisfying blend of existential philosophical theory and empirical scientific methodology. So I took an advanced social psychology course with Dr. Pinel and read Irvin Yalom’s (1980) work on existential isolation, which fascinated me. She happened to be starting some new studies to measure the phenomenon, so I joined her lab and we worked on those studies together, and that cemented my interest in the topic and led me to pursue a career in existential psychology.

ISSEP: You recently developed a new way to study existential isolation. What is existential isolation and the measure you helped develop?

Peter Helm: Existential isolation is the unbridgeable gulf between oneself and the rest of the world. We perceive and try to interpret ourselves and the world around us, but we don’t really know whether our inner experiences are similar to anybody else’s nor whether they’re an accurate understanding of reality. And we can’t ever get consensual validation from other people’s inner experiences, because other people’s inner experiences are also locked away inside them. We each really only come into contact with each others “exteriors.” So human existence is characterized by this fundamental experiential isolation.

Sometimes, despite similar appearances or behaviors, we might feel like we don’t belong—as though we’re alone in our subjective experience of reality.

However, not everyone feels this existential isolation to the same extent. So, one measurement strategy is to capture people’s feeling of being alone in their subjective interpretation of reality, their feeling that no one else can truly understand or validate their experiences and perceptions. To measure that feeling, I joined a research team (Pinel, Long, Murdoch, & Helm, 2017) that was developing and validating a set of six survey items (e.g., 1 = Strongly disagree, 10 = Strongly agree), as follows:

I usually feel like people share my outlook on life.
I often have the same reactions to things that other people around me do.
People around me tend to react to things in our environment the same way I do.
People do not often share my perspective. (reverse scored)
Other people usually do not understand my experiences. (reverse scored)
People often have the same “take” or perspective on things that I do.

Thus far, we’ve found existential isolation is related to attachment insecurity, alienation from one’s ingroups, depression and suicide ideation, death-thought accessibility, uncertainty about one’s perceptions of reality, and so on.

ISSEP: Have you been doing any other work on the topic?

Peter Helm: Yes, quite a bit! I recently led the development of a theoretical model of existential isolation, called the State Trait Existential Isolation Model (STEIM; Helm, Greenberg, Park, & Pinel, 2019). The gist of the STEIM (pronounced: “steem”) is that the awareness of existential isolation can be an in-the-moment (state) experience or more integrated into your self-concept (trait), which would each lead to different sets of mental and social experiences and even mental health outcomes.

I’ve also been leading research on the basic mechanisms involved. When people shift from feeling lower to higher existential isolation—what produces that change? We’re examining situational/social changes as well as the internal psychological mechanisms (thoughts, feelings).

My other research examines the relationships between certain social identities and existential isolation experiences. For example, we’ve found that minoritized individuals (e.g., Black, LGBT, lower SES) tend to report greater existential isolation than their majority counterparts (White, heterosexual, higher SES). I’ve also studied social identities associated with the stigmatization of emotional sharing and found, for example, that men and military veterans report higher existential isolation than women and non-veterans, and I’ll soon be similarly studying American farmers and rural communities in Missouri.

Such findings are important because our other research shows that feeling existentially isolated is linked to mental health problems, and restoring a sense of connection with others may therefore be an important target for achieving therapeutic relief. That may also help us better understand why group therapy, or even casual support groups and close relationships, can be so profoundly healthy—helping us to feel connected and validated in a sense of belonging and shared reality.

ISSEP: In what ways does your research help us make sense of interesting cultural or technological trends?

Emphasizing shared reality and belonging, the Qanon slogan was “Where we go one, we go all.”

Peter Helm: One the more dramatic side, it could help us better understand the increased popularity of conspiracy theories and echo chambers online these days, as well as suggest ways to respond to the trend. Some people seem to seek online communities that offer a sense of belonging and validation—even those centered around the most far-fetched of ideas (e.g., the Qanon conspiracy, that a cabal of satanic cannibalistic pedophiles are embedded in the government and were working to undermine Donald Trump’s presidency). It may be tempting to simply mock or bluntly reject someone’s Qanon beliefs and beg them to return to “reality.” But doing so would only emphasize that they don’t belong in the mainstream and reject their lived experience of reality, ironically driving them back online to the only place they can feel a sense of belonging and validation—their conspiracy theory communities. In contrast, experts on “cult deprogramming” (Smith, 2021) emphasize that the key to bringing people back into the mainstream is to avoid further isolating them. Instead, they recommend, validate that such communities do indeed offer belonging and accept that their perception of reality is indeed a natural outgrowth of their lived experiences; then, having legitimized their experience, offer a dignified path back to a sense of belonging and validation by patiently joining them in renewed participation in mainstream culture.

On the more mundane side is the ambiguity often involved in email and texting. Just the other day, my partner was texting a coworker when she got an ambiguous reply, flipped the screen toward me, and asked “How would you interpret this and how would you respond?” I shared and we each moved on without skipping a beat. It was the most minor interaction but it was also such a profound illustration of the everyday ways people deal with existential isolation—when we’re not quite sure about our inner subjective experience, we validate and calibrate it in ways that maintain close connection to those around us. In other words, we try to stay on the “same page” with the other people in our lives.

ISSEP: You’ve been studying these issues using psychological science. Do you see your research topic being dealt with in interesting ways in the humanities or the arts?

Peter Helm: One drawback of memorable artistic depictions of existential isolation is that they tend to be rather dramatic, instead of illustrating the mundane “everyday-ness” of the phenomenon. That said, there are some interesting films that feature existential isolation. In Donnie Darko (2001), Donnie narrowly escapes what would have been a fatal accident and begins to see a mysterious rabbit named Frank who reveals to him that the world will end in 28 days. Of course, nobody believes him and a therapist chalks it up to schizophrenia, leaving him to struggle with feelings of existential isolation until he meets his fate. Fight Club (1999) is another film in which the narrator experiences a sense of isolation compared to the way everyone around him seems to understand both himself and the world.

There are also excellent examples in music. One rapper, Logic (aka Young Sinatra), is biracial, born to Black and White parents, and grew up in Gaithersburg, Maryland where he grew up without a father and surrounded by racism, drugs, alcohol, and violence. In his song Take It Back (2017), he raps about being alone in his experiences—that Whites around him consider him Black and don’t relate to his past, whereas Blacks around him gaslight him (deny his experiences) because he presents as light-skinned and is from what they assume is a sleepy “White” town in Maryland. The song illustrates how upsetting existential isolation can be.

ISSEP: What are some useful next steps toward better understanding existential isolation?

Ministers of Loneliness, Baroness Diana Barran (UK) and Tetsushi Sakamoto (Japan), were appointed to their posts in 2019 and 2021, respectively.

Peter Helm: I think we’re still just getting started, so one useful thing would be to identify (or develop) a more effective lexicon for the phenomenon. Many people understand loneliness is important and detrimental to health; data shows it’s as detrimental as smoking and several countries (e.g., UK, Japan) now even have a Minister of Loneliness to help address the issue. However, we’re not yet totally clear about the roles of physical interpersonal isolation and feelings of existential isolation (e.g., a sense of belonging, shared reality). In the absence of an appropriately specific lexicon, researchers and participants alike might simply chalk things up to “loneliness” because that’s the most generic and available term.

But if we follow the advances made in personality psychology, we can probably benefit from developing more refined measures based on the natural language—for example, experiences related to existential isolation might be captured by terms like “belonging” and “validation” or emerging terms like “gaslighting” which is to cause someone to feel so isolated in their subjective experience they begin to question their reality. Being able to refine our understanding beyond catch-all terms like “loneliness” can have big implications for public policies and therapies and can help improve our ability to pursue the broader goals of identifying causal mechanisms, psychological correlates, and relevant health outcomes.

ISSEP: You’ve attended, and presented research at, our Existential Psychology Preconferences; how has your experience been with those?

Peter Helm: I’ve been to each Existential Psychology Preconference so far and they’ve all been amazing! I really appreciate how such varied topics are integrated around a theme and all oriented toward better understanding a particular set of existential concerns. I’ve learned to see entire subfields of psychology in brand new ways. I’m also impressed by the caliber of speakers and presenters; it’s brilliant to see how the sages of modern psychological science have studied the roles of existential concerns in key areas of mental and social life. Rich Ryan’s [2019] talk about self-determination, Roy Baumeister’s [2020] talk about agency and time, and John Jost’s [2021] talk about system justification in politics, gender, and the economy were all just amazing. I feel like every presentation at the Existential Psychology conference is filled with fascinating research questions and informative data—it’s really invigorating!

One particularly impressive presentation was Tomi-Ann Roberts’ [2021] talk about the role of sexual objectification in sexist laws and the legal control and abuse of women’s bodies, and her work to help address and reverse those harmful effects. Basic science research can sometimes feel a bit “removed,” with published studies sitting on bookshelves and seemingly read by few if any. But Dr. Roberts is leading by example in so many ways. She helped illustrate that we can build a program of research in the basic science of existential psychology and take it off the shelves and apply it to help change systems and improve the way people are treated in their daily lives.

ISSEP: What is some advice you would give to future students who have an interest in following in your footsteps?

“First... let other people know about your interests, curiosities, and aspirations.
Second... theory isn’t enough; rigor matters.”

Peter Helm: I’ve got two bits of advice. First, put yourself out there! Once something piques your interest, talk about it with your advisors, with your mentors, with other faculty members and students. All too often I hear about students who were too nervous to go to office hours, or approach a professor, or send an email to a researcher. Such folks may be busy or up the hierarchy a bit, but underneath all of that they’re also people who would be incredibly happy to hear from you, chat about shared research interests, and help support you if you want to participate in the field or learn more about the topic. So reach out and let other people know about your interests, curiosities, and aspirations. On a related note, academia and research might seem like it’s a field dominated by brilliant individuals… but it’s not—it’s a field dominated by brilliant teams. Oftentimes the best insights and the most productive research programs are achieved because people put themselves out there, cultivated friendships, and developed collaborations.

Second, as my doctoral advisor, Jeff Greenberg (Univ. of Arizona), would say: “Ideas are a dime a dozen, what makes a good social psychologist is the ability to operationalize your ideas well.” Assume that 95 out of 100 ideas are junk, but we don’t necessarily know which ones. So, chat about them all with open-minded labmates to help weed out the bad ideas from the good ones—then grow the remaining ideas, refine them, and make them into something special. But remember this isn’t philosophy: theory isn’t enough; rigor matters. You’ve got to come up with creative and incisive ways to actually capture the process or assess the outcome. Translating from ideas to measurements and manipulations is of critical importance, and you’ll want to start to build that skill early, practice it often, and get feedback from other people around you. What makes the science of existential psychology so valuable is less about what the field is learning (though obviously that’s important) and more about how the field is learning.

ISSEP: Can you tell us a little about yourself outside the research context?

Peter Helm: Skiing is definitely one of my favorite things to do. Prior to grad school I’d go skiing every weekend, from November to April. I didn’t care about being good at it, I just loved going down the slopes, getting some good exercise outside in the fresh air. More recently, since I started grad school, I’ve become a big chess nerd. I keep up with the top players in each country, stream the World Championships and other tournaments, and watch all the commentary and that sort of exciting stuff!

Disc golf at Albert-Oakland Park in Columbia, MO.

I’ve also gotten really into disc golf and Columbia, Missouri is such a great place for it. There are about a dozen courses at the parks here and they’re all excellent and in beautiful wooded areas; it’s such a spectacular way to spend time outdoors. My favorite course is at Albert-Oakland Park, with two 18-pin courses just north of Columbia. My dad has also gotten into it, too, which has been fun. He and I play together when he comes to visit, and I got him a pin for his own back yard in Raleigh, NC so he can play around his place too. It’s one of those things that’s both about physical strength as well as the subtle touch—practicing gives incremental improvements and subtle adjustments make big differences. Then there’s all the different types of disks, with lots of different sizes, shapes, and weights. I just carry around my driver and putter though; I can throw those well, but if I throw other types of discs I’m hiking all over the place! So I keep it simple and just have fun!

ISSEP: A lot of us like to listen to music around the lab; what are you listening to lately?

Peter Helm: I generally have two “modes” of listening. When I’m on my own, I don’t typically listen to music with lyrics because I don’t want to think other peoples’ thoughts—I want to think my own thoughts. That typically means I put on my Spotify playlists, which are largely electronic music, house, classical, movie soundtracks and orchestral scores. Then I can enjoy the music but still focus on whatever’s on my mind that day.

Peter Helm on Measuring Feelings of Existential Isolation

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