Related Concept Videos
Interpersonal Psychotherapy
Relationship Growth
Social Identity
Marcia's Theory of Identity Status
Social Relationships and Well-Being
Personal Identity
You might also read
Related Articles
Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.
Do digital hugs work? Re-embodying our social lives online with digital tact.
Corrigendum: Bringing forth within: Enhabiting at the intersection between enaction and ecological psychology.
Corrigendum: The pandemic experience survey II: A second corpus of subjective reports of life under social restrictions during COVID-19 in the UK, Japan, and Mexico.
Related Experiment Video
Updated: Dec 24, 2025

Assessment of Social Interaction Behaviors
Published on: February 25, 2011
Coenhabiting Interpersonal Inter-Identities in Recurrent Social Interaction.
Mark M James1, Juan Manuel Loaiza2
1School of Computer Science, University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland.
This study introduces interpersonal inter-identities (IIIs), which are emergent patterns of stable, evolving social interaction. These patterns, shaped by enhabiting and coenhabiting processes, define collective becoming beyond the individual.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Science
- Social Psychology
- Philosophy of Mind
Background:
- Traditional identity theories focus on the individual.
- Social interaction shapes individual and collective experiences.
- Enactive cognitive science offers a framework for understanding embodied cognition.
Purpose of the Study:
- To propose a novel view of identity beyond the individual, termed interpersonal inter-identities (IIIs).
- To explore the emergence of IIIs through enactive cognitive science.
- To introduce and define the concepts of enhabiting and coenhabiting.
Main Methods:
- Conceptual development of interpersonal inter-identities (IIIs).
- Application of enactive cognitive science principles.
- Introduction of 'enhabiting' and 'coenhabiting' concepts, including 'optimal grip' and 'co-optimal grip'.
Main Results:
- IIIs emerge from recurrent social interactions as stable, evolving patterns of collective being.
- Enhabiting describes individual processes stabilizing habits and personal identity.
- Coenhabiting describes social processes leading to the development of IIIs.
Conclusions:
- Identity can be understood as a dynamic, relational phenomenon beyond the individual.
- IIIs are autonomous structures with self-regulation norms, emerging from social interaction.
- The study provides a new framework for understanding collective identity and social dynamics.

