A new article has been published on Journal of Humanistic Psychology The author argues that cognition does not occur in the head as abstract information processing, but rather emerges as a physical person continuously interacts with the world, a process he describes as achieving an “optimal grasp” of the environment.
Traditional cognitive science has treated the mind as a type of information processing system, emphasizing internal representation and computation. This perspective gained attention during the cognitive revolution, when advances in artificial intelligence and formal modeling suggested that intelligent behavior could be explained by symbolic manipulation.
But as Garri Hovhannisyan points out, this approach struggles to explain something more fundamental: how organisms perceive and navigate the world in real time. For example, it has proven easier to design a machine that outperforms humans at chess than it is to build a machine that can hold an egg without breaking it.
Hovhannisyan’s work is based in the phenomenological tradition, which shifts the focus from abstract mental content to lived experience. Rather than asking how the mind represents a pre-given world, phenomenology studies how the world is revealed through embodied perception. Associated with thinkers such as Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, this tradition emphasizes that cognition is not passive, but actively shaped by an individual’s physical abilities, goals, and circumstances.
“Through my graduate education, I was trained in the phenomenological tradition, where I was introduced to a fundamentally different way of understanding cognition than we are normally accustomed to in the sciences of mind. Phenomenology shows that cognition is found not in the world of abstract mental content, but in the dance between the embodied mind and its world.”
“If we take a closer look at how cognition actually plays out in real-life experience, we see that it’s not just something in our heads, but something we actually actively do in the world. It’s more like effectively playing a song on an instrument or taking a shot on goal than solving a logical or mathematical problem; it’s an active and skillful adjustment to the situation at hand.”
“To have a mind, from this perspective, is not to process information like a computer, but to achieve a kind of ‘grasp’ over the world that we encounter perceptually. The concept of optimal grasp refers to our ability to do this well: to be better attuned, more sensitive, and more effectively situated in our engagement with the world.”
“A helpful way to understand ‘grip strength’ is to use an analogy with biological fitness. Fitness is neither something that an organism has entirely on its own nor something that is entirely forced upon it by its environment. It is an actual relational property that emerges from how the organism and environment fit together.”
The grip works similarly. This refers to how well the embodied mind adapts to the situation in which it finds itself. With a good grip, this fit is smooth, responsive, and effective. If it’s bad, the fit will collapse. In this sense, cognition does not just take place in our heads, but in an ongoing process of skillfully attuning ourselves to the demands of the world. ”
In this article, we trace this idea back to phenomenology, particularly Husserl’s analysis of lived experience and Merleau-Ponty’s emphasis on the role of the body in perception. These frameworks suggest that the world is conceived not as a set of neutral objects, but as a field of possibilities for action, or what ecological psychologists later called “affordances.” For example, a cup is perceived not only as an object with physical properties, but also as something to grasp, hold, or drink from.
Building on this foundation, this paper connects the concept of optimal grip to modern cognitive science, including inactivist and ecological approaches. These perspectives emphasize that cognition involves maintaining a dynamic balance between expectations and sensory input, which allows individuals to act effectively in uncertain environments. The goal is not to aim for perfect predictions, but to remain flexible and responsive to changing conditions over time.
“A phenomenological approach foregrounds the role of the body and perception in every cognitive act. How we see and understand the world depends on a skillful capacity for embodied engagement, which varies from person to person. For example, a smile may seem to be just a gesture of friendliness to the average person, but a dentist may For a student, it’s an opportunity to notice subtle issues with someone’s bite or the early signs of tooth decay. Similarly, an auditorium may appear to a child as a space to climb into.”To a college student, it appears to be an environment that requires sustained concentration and often involves stress. ”
“What this highlights is that the world we experience is simply not ‘given’ to everyone in the same way. In an important sense, enacted— through the way we interact, shaped by our skills, interests, and projects. This is something that is difficult to capture when traditional models focus primarily on internal information processing. ”
Hovannisian extends these ideas to the realm of personality. He proposes that personality traits can be understood as “styles of grip,” which are enduring patterns in how an individual interacts with and interprets the environment. According to this framework, traits such as extraversion and neuroticism are not simply internal dispositions, but are ways of constructing perceptions and behaviors over time.
“The natural tendency towards ‘optimal grip strength’ also means that grip strength can be lost. My research focuses on how different forms of psychopathology can be understood as a breakdown in the relationship between the embodied self and its world, expressed at the level of personality traits.”
“No one has a ‘perfect’ personality. Each of us is suited to certain situations, but not to others. As circumstances change, the situation can exceed our range of adaptation and we can lose our grip. This can occur when a situation demands more characteristics than the person is capable of achieving, or fewer characteristics than the person is inclined to express.”
“One promising direction for empirical research is to study such recurring mismatches between traits and situations. Doing so may help explain the stable patterns of problems that people find themselves in and provide a more dynamic way to understand the role of personality in psychopathology.”
Notably, this article appears as part of a special issue honoring the work of Brent Dean Robbins, whose work has been central to the advancement of humanistic and phenomenological approaches in psychology. Hovhannisian explicitly cites Robins’ extension of optimal grip to the interpersonal realm, highlighting Robins’ suggestions that: agapic Love can be understood as a form of optimal attunement in social relationships, an orientation that allows individuals to remain open to others in ways that support their own development and flourishing.
“One of the main challenges is that ‘optimal grip’ comes from the philosophical tradition of phenomenology, and philosophical concepts do not necessarily translate easily to empirical science. They tend to be rich and nuanced, but they are not readily operationalized in a way that allows for direct measurement or testing,” Hovhannisyan explained.
“A related challenge is to preserve the meaning of the translated concepts. If we try to make them measurable, we run the risk of oversimplifying them and losing their ability to capture what makes them valuable in the first place: the qualitative structure of lived experience. Finally, there is the broader challenge of integration. The aim is not to replace existing cognitive models, but to complement and extend them in a philosophically faithful and empirically rigorous way.”
This article calls for a change in the way psychologists conceptualize the mind. By framing cognition as a problem of “grip,” this article advances an embodied and relational account of the mind that emphasizes how perception, action, and meaning arise through continuous attunement between humans and the world, opening the door to extending this framework to areas such as personality and psychological functioning.
The article “Embodied Cognition Is a Matter of Grip: Humanistic Cognitive Science and Attunement Phenomenology” was written by Garri Hovhannisyan.
