The Recognition Problem in Collective Optimal Experience: The Identity of Generation and Evaluation as a Structural Event

This preprint examines the recognition problem in collective optimal experience: under what conditions a collective practice becomes identifiable as having been successfully established. Rather than treating collective experience as an accumulation of individual psychological intensities, the study proposes that collective optimal experience emerges as a structural event in which generation and evaluation are identical. The paper introduces a Process–Uncertainty–Alignment (PUA) model to account for how body grammar is dynamically activated, how interactional coupling develops, and how critical convergence is reached. The argument is grounded in qualitative field data from 24 Bunun ritual practitioners, where participants consistently described a shared moment of “establishment” that cannot be reduced to individual feelings or retrospective reports. The study contributes to theoretical psychology by reframing collective experience in terms of recognition conditions, proposing that experience exists only insofar as it is recognizable within a relational configuration.