Abdo Elnakouri

Also, a big and heartfelt thank you to the many advisors, mentors, and friends who helped make this lab a reality ❤️

WIM Lab

Hi all! Having recently moved to @uh.edu, I’ll be reviewing graduate applications to join the newly minted Worldviews in Motion lab for Fall 2026! Please share with anyone who might be interested 😊

For lab info, check out our (though it’s mostly me atm) website: www.abdoelnakouri.com

Opinion | You’re Probably Doing Small Talk Wrong

What kinds of conversations spark instant connection?

Excited to share my first NYT Guest Essay, with @ericaboothby.bsky.social.

We argue that playful riffing — creating a little world together — forges and deepens relationships through shared reality.

www.nytimes.com/2025/09/04/o...

📢JOB POSTING: Senior Director for the Center for Enlightened Disagreement (CED).📢

@nourkteily.bsky.social and I seek a strategic leader to help us build the Center (see ensuing post for information about CED).

Target salary range: $125,000-$155,000.

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careers.northwestern.edu/psc/hrnu_er/...

I’ll miss you 🥺❤️

Don’t miss out on applying to this dream post doc! 🫵🏽🔥

This moustache needs to be permanent, that’s for sure

🔥🔥🔥

New preprint! We developed new measurement tools to examine moralization in ~2B Twitter/X & Reddit posts and ~5M traditional media texts.

Key finding: moralization increased markedly on social media from 2013-2021; more than traditional media; associated with multiple user dynamics
🧵👇

Thrilled to share that my first first-authored publication is officially out (soon to be in press at Social Cognition)! 🚀

"From Data to Discovery: Unsupervised Machine Learning in Social Cognition"
📄 OSF preprint: osf.io/preprints/os...

Are There Consequences of Expressing Intellectual Humility Toward Claims Perceived as Established or Moral Truths? Implications for Judgments of Expresser’s Competence and Warmth - Jonah Koetke, Karin... Prior research has found that people perceive intellectual humility (IH)—the awareness of one’s intellectual limitations—as a positive characteristic. Here, we ...

Are there contexts where expressing intellectual humility (IH) can backfire? On established or morally convicted topics, the positive impacts of perceived high (vs. low) IH on competence and warmth are attenuated or reversed.

Full Paper: doi.org/10.1177/1948...

You might say it was a labour of love…lol, I’ll show myself out

Title page of the paper "Merging in Close Relationships"

Excited to share a new paper in Current Directions on the theme of merging in close relationships, with @emmamcgorray.bsky.social, @erinhughes.bsky.social , and @abdoe.bsky.social! In the paper, we discuss merging in the domains of selves, goals, processing, and reality. tinyurl.com/ynbedzys (1/4)

First (but certainly not last) developmental paper now accepted at Developmental Psychology! We asked: Do children value intellectual humility over intellectual arrogance? The answer is YES! Preprint available here! osf.io/preprints/os...

Franki is a phenomenal scientist, mentor, and person. What an amazing opportunity!

I'm hiring a new lab manager!

Deadline to apply is April 1st. More details here: www.chicagobooth.edu/-/media/facu...

I formed some of my deepest and most impactful partnerships as a lab manager, and it's a position that I highly value.

If you are a PI, please circulate to possible applicants!

Congrats, Shauna!!

Thanks for sharing this!! :)

Live from #spsp2025: @abdoe.bsky.social shedding light on pluralistic ignorance. Democrats & Republicans *believe* they fundamentally disagree on core values, but in reality, are far more similar than they are different (ds~=1.3)--despite real differences (e.g., in conformity & traditionalism).

@curtispuryear.bsky.social a study of a decade of twitter posts shows and new measure of moralization shows that moralization has substantially increased over time (d = .45!). Driven by both self selection and within-user increase over time! #comppsych #spsp2025 (also stay tuned for this paper😎)

If you're going to #SPSP2025, please consider coming to our Friday symposium on false political pessimism!

👀New preprint! In 3 prereg experiments we study how engagement-based algorithms amplify ingroup, moral and emotional (IME) content in ways that disrupt social norm learning (and test one solution!) w/ @joshcjackson.bsky.social and my amazing lab managers
@merielcd.bsky.social
& Silvan Baier 🧵👇

We're extending out the deadline to submit blitz talks to the Shared Reality Virtual Conference! New deadline is February 26th.

@emmamiller.bsky.social @changlu-cl.bsky.social

Please share!

Link to register for the conference and submit blitz here: t.co/TXCq3L724h

✨New preprint✨How does repeated exposure to transgressions online shape moral judgment? Results show two competing processes:
💠We get desensitized = ⬇️ wrong
💠Transgression seems more infamous =⬆️wrong
Relative strength of each may predict outrage to viral transgressions w/ @danieleffron.bsky.social

New open-access paper in Annual Review of Psychology with @mjbsp.bsky.social: “Ideology: Psychological Similarities and Differences Across the Ideological Spectrum Reexamined”

www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

featuring an exciting group of speakers: @elisabaek.bsky.social, @lydiaemery.bsky.social, Zoë Fowler, @mariagendron.bsky.social, @rdhawkins.bsky.social, Veronica Lamarche, Michael Tomasello, and @chriswelker.bsky.social.

Co-organized with @emmamiller.bsky.social and @changlu-cl.bsky.social!

We are excited to announce this year's Shared Reality Virtual Conference happening Wednesday March 12 & Thursday March 13, 2025, between 9:50 AM - 1:10 PM ET!

You can register below to receive the Zoom link! Submit a data blitz anytime until Feb 7.
northwestern.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...

To see how this all started, please also see
@mrossignacmilon.bsky.social et al.’s pioneering work on generalized shared reality in relationships:
x.com/mrossignacmi...

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Based on past work
(x.com/AbdoElnakour...), we hypothesize that people are motivated to share reality in this way as a means of reaching their goals.

Link to study here: www.researchgate.net/publication/...

5/

Finally, we found that experimentally increasing the importance of health and fitness goals increased generalized shared reality with partners instrumental to health and fitness goals.

4/