Interpersonal and Collective Affective Niche Construction: Empirical and Normative Perspectives on Social Media.
Review of Philosophy and Psychology March 18, 2022 Michiru Nagatsu, Mikko Salmela
Collective affective niche construction extends the extended mind thesis from cognition to emotion but lacks a detailed psychological account of how collective affectivity is scaffolded and has been criticized for assuming an autonomous user of affective resources. The authors propose that the social motivation hypothesis, grounded in empirical psychology and the classic theory of moral sentiments, explains the basic mechanisms of human social orientation in collective affective niche construction. They also begin addressing normative criticisms by adopting a we-mode approach to collective emotion, using social media as a case study of collective affective niches and its impact on subjective well-being. Future directions for a normative theory are identified.