Situated affectivity on four legs: dogs as affective scaffolds

This paper aims to fill a gap in the literature on situated affectivity by proposing that the notion of affective scaffold be extended to the case of companion dogs. Situated affectivity posits that emotions and affective experiences are profoundly shaped by and embedded within the social and environmental contexts in which they unfold. We argue that dogs, and likely pets more broadly, play a significant role in regulating and supporting the affective lives of their human companions – a role that can be captured through key dimensions identified in the affective scaffolding literature, including trust, individuation, sharing, temporal scale, and reciprocity. After defending our main thesis, we briefly consider some ethical concerns that may arise when dogs are treated as affective scaffolds, focusing in particular on the risk of affective injustice.