Grief as an extended emotion

In recent years, human scientists have generalized the so-called hypothesis of the extended mind to human emotional life. The extended mind hypothesis states that objects within the environment function as a part of the mind and are centrally involved in cognition. Some emotion researchers have argued along these lines that there are bodily extended emotions, and (more controversially) environmentally extended emotions. In this article, we will first briefly introduce the idea of the extended mind and extended emotions before applying it to the emotion of grief specifically. We explain by introducing the notion of a cultural affective niche within which grief is scaffolded and enacted. An affective niche couples the person and the environment and enables the realization of affective states.