All mental disorders are fundamentally affective disorders, according to an argument that draws on enactivist philosophy and ecological psychology. Enactivism characterizes mental disorders as disordered sense-making, which is inherently affective. The affordance-based approach emphasizes that affectivity discloses action possibilities. Both sense-making and affordance perception rely on affectively driven selective attention. The argument is illustrated by showing that language disturbances in schizophrenia and context blindness in autism stem from disruptions to affectivity and selective attention, impairing engagement with relevant affordances.
The surrounding world can help sustain and amplify both cognition and emotion. Affective niches—environmental resources and interpersonal scaffolds—not only evoke specific emotions and bodily affective styles but also support self-awareness and interpersonal understanding. In psychotherapy and peacebuilding, these affective scaffolds facilitate self-knowledge, enhance social cognition, and build trust among participants. This is because affectivity shapes how subjects frame and attend to their surroundings; regulating and modifying emotion opens up new interpretive frames and establishes new habits of mind. Thus, creating an affective niche can significantly contribute to various modes of cognition.