Chareina Johnson on existential isolation and help-seeking
Chareina Johnson holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Hofstra University and a master’s degree in psychology from Rutgers University - Camden. In fall 2026, she will join the doctoral program in the Personality & Social Contexts area of psychology at the University of Michigan. Her research interests focus on identity and culture and she is interested in how existential psychology can explain culture and society. She appreciates that existential psychological concepts (i.e., death anxiety, cultural worldviews, and the self) can be used to explain people’s relationship with religion, one’s political affiliation, navigation of institutions, and responses to life-altering experiences. She is a member of Phi Beta Kappa National Honor Society. She also received the ISSEP Graduate Student Research Award in 2025 and the William H. Tucker Graduate Psychology Award from Rutgers University - Camden.
Chareina on the web: LinkedIn | Google Scholar
By Grace Rivera, University of Mississippi. March 9, 2026.
ISSEP: How did you first become aware of and interested in existentialism and the science of existential psychology?
Chareina Johnson: When I was an undergrad, I took a moral foundations class at Hofstra University. This class was about topics like morality, terror management theory, and existentialism, but it was being applied to politics, culture, and American society as a whole. I really liked being able to make connections and the conversation we had in class.
I had never heard about any of these existential theories before this, so it was really interesting to think about how existentialism is a general human experience, and to be able to make connections to how that actually impacts our daily lives, from experiencing elections or political systems to people's interactions with each other. For example, in this class, we thought about how death anxiety might be involved in the politicization of the country, it really struck me that what we were learning might explain why people act a certain way or believe a certain thing. Existential psychology brought it all together for me because it was so relevant and current to all of our lives – it impacts all of us, whether we like it or not. I think I really liked that because of my first taste of putting everything together and gaining a better understanding of society in a psychological sense.
Then in my master's program at Rutgers, I took a class with Dr. Andrew Abeyta called Existential Psychology. I really loved that class because it provided much more detailed existential social psychological theory and research. That made me excited to be able to apply the concepts to things that I saw happening in the world around me or in society.
ISSEP: You've been doing some great research in existential psychology lately; can you tell us more about your work?
Chareina Johnson: Yes, of course! My research was about existential isolation, First Generation college student status, and academic help seeking. This work ties into my interests in identity, looking at groups whose culture may not really match typical university culture. For example, Black people and people who are First Generation students tend to come from more interdependent cultural contexts, while typical American university culture tends to be more independent. Thus, there may be a cultural mismatch that makes certain students feel like they don't belong on campus. This is important, because it’s a social setting which students are in for four or more years!
For many first generation college students, campus life may feel culturally unfamiliar which may lead to feelings of existential isolation—a sense that nobody understands their subjective experience in this specific environment—which, in turn, is associated with lower academic help-seeking behaviors.
So, to explore that possibility, my research looked at whether students who experienced cultural mismatch had heightened feelings of existential isolation—a sense that nobody understands their subjective experience in this specific environment. We thought First Generation college students might experience greater existential isolation, which might be related to lower help-seeking behaviors, which might explain why they also tend to struggle more academically on average and don't always have the greatest outcomes in college.
Indeed, the results indicated that First Generation college students did have higher levels of existential isolation, compared to continuing generation college students, and that in turn was also associated with lower levels of academic help-seeking. This work helps us to better understand why we see disparities between First Generation college students and continuing generation college students in terms of their academic performance and graduation rates.
ISSEP: That’s so interesting; how did you develop your interest in this work?
Chareina Johnson: Well, I was initially focused on learning the prejudice and discrimination literature and then I became more broadly interested in culture and identity. That led to an interest in identity and belonging, and experiences like identity threat, which is what I did my thesis on. So, initially existentialism wasn't something I connected to these experiences. But then, when I was taking the Existential Psychology course, Dr. Abeyta invited me to work on this project with him—and it was so interesting!
I started to wonder more about the cultures of specific institutions and how they might connect to different students’ existential experiences, worldviews, and behaviors. For example, First Generation students may experience an educational cultural mismatch, which may undermine their sense of belonging and contribute to a sense of existential isolation.
I'm not a First Generation student myself, so I had not thought about studying First Generation students before this. But, now I’m aware of how important it is; there are students who may be struggling, and if we want to contribute to better academic outcomes for all students, we have to pay attention to these students who are in these culturally unfamiliar situations.
ISSEP: What do you think are some important next steps toward better understanding these experiences?
Chareina Johnson: I wonder if students might avoid feelings of existential isolation, engage in more help-seeking behaviors, and have better academic outcomes at schools with more of these built-in communities of people who are going through the same experiences together—such as all first generation, all living together.
Some schools have the resources and space to have living-learning communities for First Generation student housing, or other identity group housing. My school also had an Honors College, where they all lived together to build support and to help students get through this time of huge changes with their peers. I did this research at a commuter campus, where we only have a few dorms, so I wonder if existential isolation and academic help-seeking differs depending on whether schools have living-learning communities in place.
And then I also think about mental health too. If students are in a perpetual state of existential isolation for, say, eight or nine months out of the year, that’s likely having an impact on mental health as well. And again, does that vary based on the different communities in place to help support different groups of students?
Finally, a lot of First Generation students sit at intersections of other non-traditional campus identities, for example someone might be a student of color as well as being First Generation. So, if you're a First Generation student and a student who is Black, there may be multiple ways to feel existential connection—such as feeling welcomed into the campus community as a first generation college student and/or participating in the Black Student Union. So, it may be important to understand how the most important and salient identity interfaces with the social and cultural communities available on campus, and how people might dynamically adapt to meet their existential needs.
ISSEP: In what ways might your research help us make sense of important human experiences, better understand important events, or inform cultural and technological trends?
Chareina Johnson: I think this work has a lot of implications for how universities might support First Generation students, because help-seeking can be hard and if people feel isolated they may not ask for help. We know this about mental health, but for some students asking for help academically is hard too. And, especially if students feel a sense of existential isolation—a sense that nobody understands their subjective experience in this specific environment—it may not even occur to them that there is anyone they can go to on campus for help. Just making tutoring available doesn't make students feel like their experiences will be understood or that tutoring will be helpful. Universities may need to take steps to present these resources in culturally diverse ways, designed to help connect with culturally diverse students who may not be familiar with the traditional university cultural settings.
I’ve also thought about this issue being important for younger people on campus too. I think there are ideas for how you're supposed to be when you're a young college student, like going to college is supposed to be the best time of your life, filled with new friendships and good times. But it isn't always, especially if you feel like you don't belong and you don't have a group or you don't have support—you’ll just feel isolated and uncomfortable all the time. So, I think it might be beneficial to look at this for younger people. It’s easy to not think about existential isolation applying to young people, or the people who I walk past on campus. But a young person on campus might feel like nobody here understands their experience, even though we're all students and we're on this campus together. We’re not necessarily on the same page all the time, and I think we can forget that sometimes.
“It’s so fun to just explore different things and to see how vast the world of existential psychology is and how it applies to literally every aspect of our lives.”
ISSEP: You have presented at the ISSEP Preconference; how was your experience?
Chareina Johnson: Yes, and that was my first in-person conference and I really loved it!
I think sometimes I get so much tunnel vision around what I’m studying that I forget how much I like learning about all these other things going on in the field, like the talk on “religious dones”. It’s so fun to just explore different things and to see how vast the world of existential psychology is and how it applies to literally every aspect of our lives. There’s always something you can connect to; there's something there for everyone!
I think that’s why existential psychology is fun in general, because you can apply it to yourself and your experience. I liked seeing the different research interests and how they all fit under this umbrella. It’s such a diverse area of ideas and concepts, and they all somehow fit in ways that make sense to all of our very complex lives. And that's really cool. I also liked meeting a lot of people - for example, I met Elizabeth Pinel who came over to hear more about my poster. And listening to how other people talk about their research with their posters, they would bring up things I just never considered, and that was really interesting to hear other people's journeys. I thought that was really cool.
ISSEP: Can you tell us a little about yourself outside of the work or research context?
Chareina Johnson: I'm from the Philly area, and live there currently. I like to travel and recently went on a trip to San Francisco with my mom. I’m into history, in general, and art history in particular – it's interesting and really important. I spend a lot of time baking too, which can be an expensive hobby, but it’s a lot of fun.
I absolutely love musicals; they’re my happy place. I can’t sing or dance or act, but I like to go watch them and enjoy it and wish it was me and I had that much talent. Wicked is my favorite musical, and when the movie came out I saw it twice. I just went to Broadway in January and saw Hadestown, which was also really good; heartbreaking every time, but I highly recommend.
ISSEP: What's one piece of advice you would give to future students who have an interest in following in your footsteps so they can make innovative contributions to the science of existential psychology like you have?
Chareina Johnson: I actually have two pieces of advice.
First, stay open and keep your head up. I think sometimes research can kind of seem daunting, a little overwhelming. And you might think, “I don't know how to do this, I'm just a student, I don't know what I'm doing.” But, that’s okay, you're not supposed to know what you're doing yet! You're a student, you're here to learn, and learning takes time. When I first started my master's program, sometimes I was very stressed and thought, “I can't do this.” But I reminded myself that learning something new is not supposed to be easy—you're learning a new way to think about things, new ways to solve problems and learn, new ways to write, and so on—and reminded myself that I got this far because I have what it takes to learn, and that I needed to be patient and give myself the time to learn and grow.
Second, don't lose sight of how far you've come. I think that we often focus on how we're not where we want to be yet, but instead we can look back at how much we’ve already accomplished. Like, look how much you’ve done. You made it—you figured out what your research question is, you figured out your research design, you figured out some tough statistics, and maybe it took a minute. And maybe your advisor put all these red marks all over your paper because it needs to be fixed. But every one of those things is another step along your path, and you’ve already come so far. Keep going, keep your head up, keep pushing. You'll get there. It’s just all part of the journey.
ISSEP: A lot of us like to listen to music while working or otherwise, what are you listening to lately?
Chareina Johnson: I used to play the clarinet and I was in band, so I just like music in general.
When I'm studying, I can't do music with words, because then I start singing, I get distracted, or I type the words that are in the songs. So, I usually listen to instrumental versions of pop songs or R&B, like what The Piano Guys do, or classical music.
But when I’m not studying, it’s musicals. On the way to campus today, I was listening to The Great Gatsby soundtrack; got through Act One. I’ve been listening to the Hadestown soundtrack a lot lately as well. Love it.