The Archbridge Institute’s Human Flourishing Lab is pleased to welcome Joshua Hicks as a new Psychology of Progress fellow.
Joshua A. Hicks, PhD, is a professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Texas A&M University. His research focuses on existential psychology, with a primary emphasis on the subjective experience of meaning in life and authenticity. He examines situational and personal factors that give rise to these experiences, as well as why they matter for motivation, well-being, and social behavior. In his research, he integrates the methods of psychological science to empirically examine these enduring human concerns, offering insights into how people can build lives that feel both meaningful and authentically their own.
Dr. Hicks has published over 100 scholarly articles in leading scientific outlets, including the Annual Review of Psychology, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Nature, Nature Human Behaviour, and Nature Reviews Psychology. In addition, his research often reaches broad public audiences through outlets such as The Washington Post, TEDx, Scientific American, Greater Good Magazine, and NPR’s Think, among others.
On Joshua Hicks’ addition as a Human Flourishing Lab fellow, Archbridge Executive Vice President & Chief Operating Officer Clay Routledge said:
“I’m excited to welcome Josh as an Archbridge fellow under our psychology of flourishing pillar. A central focus of our work at Archbridge’s Human Flourishing Lab is developing what I call the psychology of progress. As one of the world’s leading researchers in existential psychology, Josh is an ideal partner to help advance this initiative and strengthen its scholarly foundations.”
To introduce himself, Hicks participated in an interview with Routledge:
You and I are both existential psychologists, which is a field most people haven’t heard of. For those who aren’t familiar, what is existential psychology and why does it matter?
I have always found it difficult to clearly define existential psychology in a single, concise way. The personality psychologist David Funder once noted that it is often easier to understand existential psychology in terms of the core questions it addresses, and that captures my perspective on the topic as well. At its heart, existential psychology focuses on some of the more ubiquitous human concerns, such as the benefits (and sometimes costs) of believing that our behavior is autonomously chosen, belief in free will, awareness of mortality, and the experience of meaning in life, authenticity, and a sense that we know who we “really” are. These are issues that people, across cultures and across time, care about deeply.
Existential psychologists are far from the only people who think about these issues. These themes appear in many ancient texts and the writings of early thinkers, and they continue to show up in nearly every form of storytelling, from books and films to music. Even if people do not always reflect on them explicitly, most are aware that their time is limited and want to believe they have lived a meaningful existence.
These existential concerns feel especially urgent right now. Modern life is filled with factors that can, for example, disrupt our sense of meaning and alienate us from knowing who we really are. Social media algorithms influence what we see and how we think, potentially undermining our sense of agency, disrupting our ability to direct our attention, and reducing opportunities for reflection on our own thoughts and values. Political polarization erodes trust in others, and global events, from pandemics to wars to fears about an AI centric future, make clear how uncertain the future is. Each of these events can undermine our sense of coherence and hope, and ultimately make it more difficult to feel like we know who we are and what we should be doing with our lives.
Uncertainty and even hopelessness have always been part of the human condition, but today they feel more salient and pressing for many people. Existential psychology matters, in part, because it helps us understand the factors that lead people to lose, maintain, and restore a sense of meaning and authenticity during these times. It also highlights how the feeling of meaning and authenticity can serve as psychological resources, helping people cope with adversity and maintain a clear understanding of the lives they want to live.
Your research touches on a number of areas within existential psychology. What are some of the main topics you focus on, and what are the questions driving your work right now?
My two primary areas of research focus on the experiences of meaning in life and authenticity. Regarding meaning, I have been particularly interested in understanding its core components. Most people agree that meaning involves coherence, or making sense of one’s life, purpose, or having goals and direction, and mattering, feeling that one’s life has value and significance to others. I agree that these are central components of meaning.
However, my recent work has aimed to expand this framework by showing that experiential appreciation (sometimes referred to as experiential significance), the ability to value and appreciate one’s ongoing life experiences, is also critical to feeling that one’s life has meaning. For instance, our research shows that people who are able to appreciate even seemingly mundane experiences, such as enjoying time outside in a park, are more likely to report that their lives feel meaningful, even if they do not fully understand why their lives matter or what goals they should be pursuing.
Regarding authenticity, I am interested in the variables that give rise to these feelings. Most people think of authenticity as being consistent with one’s true self, which implies that we have some clarity about who we are. One current line of work my students and I are pursuing examines how problematic social media use interferes with our ability to feel like we know our true self. In these studies, we find strong evidence that problematic social media use, often characterized by a persistent urge to check one’s phone, is a robust predictor of self-alienation, or feeling out of touch with one’s true self, even after controlling for factors typically associated with such problematic social media use, such as depression and anxiety. This suggests that problematic engagement with social media, and its influence on our ability to control what we are paying attention to, may uniquely undermine people’s sense of connection to themselves, potentially undermining our ability to feel authentic.
A second ongoing project related to authenticity involves work with my colleagues to better understand the processes that give rise to these feelings. In this work, we developed what we call the Integrity–Fluency Model (IFM), which proposes that authenticity arises from two primary cues: self-integrity, or acting in line with one’s core values, and experiential fluency, or the sense of ease and naturalness in one’s behavior. Both are distinct pathways to feeling authentic. For example, people may feel authentic when they adhere to their values, even if doing so requires effort, or when they feel natural and at ease, such as during an effortless conversation with a close friend. Although these cues often overlap, they are conceptually unique. My students and I are currently conducting several projects to better understand these forms of authenticity, including whether they are uniquely associated with different aspects of well-being and how they operate in situations where they may conflict.
You’re joining us as a fellow to help develop our Psychology of Progress initiative. People who study and promote human progress tend to focus on a range of areas, from physical science, engineering, and technology to medicine, economics, and governance. But psychology is largely absent from the conversation. Why do you think it shouldn’t be?
I think the topics I described earlier are central to the psychology of progress. Progress depends on human motivation, creativity, growth oriented mindsets, and the psychological conditions that sustain them. We know, for example, that lacking a sense of meaning and purpose or feeling low autonomy is associated with reduced motivation and general apathy, which are clearly antithetical to progress.
At the same time, many domains that contribute to progress, such as creativity, innovation, open-mindedness, and purposeful strivings, are fundamentally psychological. Yet, we still have a limited understanding of which psychological factors are most important and how they work together. For me, much of this comes down to understanding the processes that give rise to hope, curiosity, dedication, and creativity. If we want to understand progress in a comprehensive way, psychology must be part of that conversation.
We’re going to be working together on a book on the psychology of progress. What excites you about that project, and what do you hope it accomplishes?
I am very excited to work on this book. Some of the most meaningful ideas in psychology have emerged from engaging with other people’s work, and that process almost always generates new ways of thinking. The topics related to progress are not new, but bringing them together in a more focused and psychologically grounded way is. I think this project has real potential to move that conversation forward.
More broadly, I hope the book makes the psychology of progress more accessible and serves as a resource for others. Many of the relevant topics, motivation, meaning, creativity, well-being, are well studied, but they are often examined in isolation rather than explicitly connected to progress. My hope is that this book helps integrate these ideas and clarifies how they collectively contribute to human progress.
I also hope it helps generate broader interest in this area. About 20 years ago, we saw a renewed focus on meaning in life, and more recently, authenticity has become a central topic. I think the psychology of progress has the potential to follow a similar trajectory, and this project could help accelerate that shift.
On a more personal level, I am really looking forward to the collaboration. Bringing together like-minded thinkers with different strengths has the potential not only to produce a strong book, but also to develop a more integrative and generative framework for understanding progress.
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