How we change what others think, feel, believe and do

 Basic Emotions

Explanations > Emotions > Basic Emotions

List of emotions | So what

List of emotions

What are the basic emotions? As ever, theorists disagree. Ortony and Turner (1990) collated a wide range of research on identification of basic emotions.

Here is a deeper list of emotions as described in Shaver et al. (2001), where emotions were categorised into a short tree structure.

There are also moves to minimize the number of basic emotions. Jack et al. (2014) analyzed the 42 facial muscles which shape emotions in the face and came up with only four basic emotions. Starting from the Ekman group of anger, fear, surprise, disgust, happiness and sadness, they found fear and surprise are similar, with 'eyes wide open' as the person increases visual attention. Anger and disgust are also similar, both starting with nose wrinkling.

So What

Learn to recognise emotions at increasing levels of detail. If you can see the emotion, then you can respond appropriately to it.

See also

Plutchik's Ten Postulates

Ekman, P. (1972). Universals and Cultural Differences in Facial Expression of Emotion. In J. Cole ed. Nebraska Symposium on Motivation. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 207-283.

Ekman, P., Friesen, W. V., & Ellsworth, P. (1982). What emotion categories or dimensions can observers judge from facial behavior? In P. Ekman (Ed.), Emotion in the human face (pp. 39-55). New York: Cambridge University Press.

Frijda, N. H. (1986). The emotions. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Gray, J. A. (1985). The whole and its parts: Behaviour, the brain, cognition and emotion. Bulletin of the British Psychological Society. 38, 99-112.

Izard, C. E. (1977). Human emotions. New York: Plenum Press

Jack, R.E., Garrod, O.G.B and Schyns, P.G. Dynamic Facial Expressions of Emotion Transmit an Evolving Hierarchy of Signals over Time. Current Biology, 24, 2, 187-192

James, W. (1884). What is an emotion? Mind, 9, 188-205.

McDougall, W. (1926). An introduction to social psychology. Boston: Luce.
Mowrer, O. H. (1960). Learning theory and behavior. New York: Wiley.

Oatley, K., & Johnson-Laird, P. N. (1987). Towards a cognitive theory of emotions. Cognition & Emotion, 1, 29-50.

Ortony, A., & Turner, T. J. (1990). What's basic about basic emotions? Psychological Review, 97, 315-331.

Panksepp, J. (1982). Toward a general psychobiological theory of emotions. The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 5, 407-467.

Parrott, W. (2001), Emotions in Social Psychology, Psychology Press, Philadelphia

Plutchik, R. (1980). A general psychoevolutionary theory of emotion. In R. Plutchik & H. Kellerman (Eds.), Emotion: Theory, research, and experience: Vol. 1. Theories of emotion (pp. 3-33). New York: Academic.

Shaver, P., Schwartz, J., Kirson, D., & O'Connor, C. (2001). Emotional Knowledge: Further Exploration of a Prototype Approach. In G. Parrott (Eds.), Emotions in Social Psychology: Essential Readings (pp. 26-56). Philadelphia, PA: Psychology Press.

Tomkins, S. S. (1984). Affect theory. In K. R. Scherer & P. Ekman (Eds.), Approaches to emotion (pp. 163-195). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum

Watson, J. B. (1930). Behaviorism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Weiner, B., & Graham, S. (1984). An attributional approach to emotional development. In C. E. Izard, J. Kagan, & R. B. Zajonc (Eds.), Emotions, cognition, and behavior (pp. 167-191). New York: Cambridge University Press.