Affective Scaffolds, Expressive Arts, and Cognition.
Frontiers in Psychology January 1, 2016 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00359 (opens in new tab) via PubMed
Summary
AI-generated from the abstractThe 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.
Study at a glance
| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Keywords | Conflict resolution Emotion Expressive arts Extended mind Scaffolding |
| Key finding | Argues that affective niches in psychotherapy and peacebuilding support cognitive capacities such as self-awareness, social cognition, and trust by linking emotion regulation to new interpretive frames and habits of mind. |
Abstract
Some theorists have argued that elements of the surrounding world play a crucial role in sustaining and amplifying both cognition and emotion. Such insights raise an interesting question about the relationship between cognitive and affective scaffolding: in addition to enabling the realization of specific affective states, can an affective niche also enable the realization of certain cognitive capacities? In order to gain a better understanding of this relationship between affective niches and cognition, I will examine the use of expressive arts in the context of psychotherapy and peacebuilding. In these settings, environmental resources and interpersonal scaffolds not only evoke emotion and encourage the adoption of particular bodily affective styles, but also support the development of capacities for self-awareness and interpersonal understanding. These affective scaffolds play a crucial role in therapy and peacebuilding, in fact, insofar as they facilitate the development of self-knowledge, enhance capacities associated with social cognition, and build positive rapport and trust among participants. I will argue that this is because affectivity is linked to the way that subjects frame and attend to their surroundings. Insofar as the regulation and modification of emotion goes hand in hand with opening up new interpretive frames and establishing new habits of mind, the creation of an affective niche can contribute significantly to various modes of cognition.