The recognition problem in collective optimal experience: the identity of generation and recognition as a structural event

The recognition of collective optimal experience remains structurally unresolved in psychology. Existing frameworks, from group flow to collective effervescence, have extended optimal experience to the collective level, yet they have generally treated individual reports as the primary endpoint for determining whether such experience has occurred, leaving unresolved how collective recognition might be established at the relational rather than individual level. This recognition problem is addressed through an empirical analysis of bisosilin, the evaluative term used by Bunun singers to determine whether their ritual polyphonic chant pasibutbut had reached completion. Drawing on two-stage qualitative fieldwork with 24 participants, the findings indicate that recognition does not depend on any individual’s internal state, but rather on whether a specific relational configuration, comprising sonic alignment, bodily coordination, and shared intentional orientation, has been achieved. On this basis, the study advances a central theoretical claim: collective optimal experience is not first generated and only subsequently recognized, but is established as a structural event in which generation and recognition are constituted as structurally inseparable aspects. To account for this process, two analytical frameworks are proposed. First, a three-layer model of body grammar (action, perceptual, and consciousness grammar) specifies the necessary structural conditions of collective optimal experience while showing that these conditions enable but do not establish it. Second, the process, uncertainty, alignment (PUA) model explains how these conditions are dynamically activated, leading to a nonlinear transition, termed critical convergence, at which point establishment occurs. This implies that collective optimal experience is not an internal state to be measured but a condition that becomes identifiable only insofar as it is collectively recognizable. Accordingly, retrospective self-reports capture the aftermath of establishment rather than its occurrence. This study does not introduce a new type of collective peak experience but instead redefines the generative mechanism and establishment condition of collective optimal experience as a structural event.