Collective emotions and the distributed emotion framework

Abstract

The main aim of this paper is to contribute to the development of the distributed emotion framework and to conceptualize collective emotions within that framework. According to the presented account, dynamics of mutual affecting and being affected might couple individuals such that macro-level self-organization of a distributed cognitive system emerges. The paper suggests calling a distributed self-organizing system consisting of several emoters a “collective.” The emergence of a collective with a distributed affective process enables the involved individuals to enact emotions together. Accordingly, the suggestion is to conceptualize collective emotions as mereologically complex affective processes consisting of contributions which are distributed among several individuals and integrated through ongoing macro-level self-organization. To spell-out this account, the paper combines key conceptual resources from dynamical systems theory, enactive cognitive science, ecological psychology, and phenomenology. A second aim of the paper is distinguishing collective emotions from group-based emotions and suggesting an understanding of shared emotions as a subtype of collective emotions within the distributed emotion framework.