8-9th of June, 2026
University of Southern Denmark, Odense. 

Affective atmospheres are a notoriously hard-to-grasp phenomenon. And yet, some things seem to be settled. Most agree that experiencing atmospheres means experiencing holistic affective qualities of situations, whether they are spatial, virtual, or imaginary in nature. Another widely held assumption concerns the way in which people experience atmospheres. According to this assumption, people experience atmospheres as bodily-felt, multisensorial phenomena, in an implicit and pre-reflective manner. Accordingly, it does not seem to require much effort to experience an affective phenomenon that is certainly difficult to grasp conceptually. Whereas that might be true in some cases, I doubt that it holds as a general rule. In this talk, I will therefore challenge such an overly ‘smooth’ conception of how people experience atmospheres. Not least, this paints a ‘messier’ and thus more realistic picture of how experiencing atmospheres unfolds and influences people’s attentional, cognitive, and interactional capacities in a given situation.

I argue that experiencing atmospheres need not be implicit or pre-reflective. At first glance, this is not a novel claim at all, for atmospheres can clearly be ‘explicit’ or ‘thematic’ and serve as intentional objects of reflective acts. However, I aim to substantiate the more specific claim that experiencing atmospheres can be drastic or opaque. This claim differs from identifying specific types of atmospheres and instead emphasizes a potential complication of experiencing atmospheres in general.

First, I introduce some widely accepted assumptions about what it means to experience an atmosphere. I then argue that atmospheres serve an affective framing function that facilitates social coordination and imbues situation types with personal significance. Next, I present drastic and opaque atmospheres as experiences that challenge some of the widely accepted assumptions about experiencing atmospheres. Drawing on findings from affective science and emotion psychology, I argue that the experiential profile of drastic and opaque atmospheres complicates their affective framing function, but also clarifies it. Finally, I outline the consequences of such ‘difficult atmospheres’ for social sensitivity and interactions.