Key Takeaways
- People experience six core types of basic emotions that impact their thoughts, behaviors, and interactions.
- Emotions can combine in different ways to form more complex feelings beyond the basic six emotions.
- Understanding both basic and complex emotions helps explain how people react to different situations in everyday life.
During the 1970s, psychologist Paul Eckman identified six basic emotions that he suggested were universally experienced in all human cultures. The emotions he identified were happiness, sadness, disgust, fear, surprise, and anger. Such emotions can affect our choices, actions, and perceptions.
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Other Types of Emotions
The six basic emotions described by Eckman are just a portion of the many different types of emotions that people are capable of experiencing. Eckman’s theory suggests that these core emotions are universal throughout cultures all over the world.
However, other theories and new research continue to explore the many different types of emotions and how they are classified. Eckman later added a number of other emotions to his list but suggested that, unlike his original six emotions, not all of these could necessarily be encoded through facial expressions. Some of the emotions he later identified included:
- Amusement
- Contempt
- Contentment
- Embarrassment
- Excitement
- Guilt
- Pride in achievement
- Relief
- Satisfaction
- Shame
It is important to remember that no emotion is an island. Instead, the many emotions you experience are nuanced and complex, working together to create the rich and varied fabric of your emotional life.
How Basic Emotions Form Complex Feelings
Psychologist Robert Plutchik proposed a “wheel of emotions” that worked something like the color wheel. Emotions can be combined to form different feelings, much like colors can be mixed to create other shades.
According to this theory, the more basic emotions act something like building blocks. More complex, sometimes mixed emotions are blends of these more basic ones. For example, basic emotions such as joy and trust can be combined to create love.
A 2017 study suggests that there are far more basic emotions than previously believed. In the study published in Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences, researchers identified 27 different categories of emotion. Rather than being entirely distinct, however, the researchers found that people experience these emotions along a gradient.
What Human Emotion Are You? Take the Quiz and Find Out
Emotions are a critical component of our daily lives and can often define the human experience. Take this free quiz to help you determine which emotion drives the way you experience the world and express your feelings.
This emotion quiz was medically reviewed by Rachel Goldman, PhD, FTOS.
Other Theories of Emotion
As with many concepts in psychology, not all theorists agree on how to classify emotions or what the basic emotions actually are. While Eckman’s theory is one of the best-known, other theorists have proposed their own ideas about what emotions make up the core of the human experience.
For example, some researchers have suggested that there are only two or three basic emotions. Others have suggested that emotions exist in a hierarchy. Primary emotions such as love, joy, surprise, anger, and sadness can then be further broken down into secondary emotions. Love, for example, consists of secondary emotions, such as affection and longing.
These secondary emotions might then be broken down still further into what are known as tertiary emotions. The secondary emotion of affection includes tertiary emotions, such as liking, caring, compassion, and tenderness.
A more recent study suggests that there are at least 27 distinct emotions, all of which are highly interconnected. After analyzing the responses of more than 800 men to more than 2,000 video clips, researchers created an interactive map to demonstrate how these emotions are related to one another.
“We found that 27 distinct dimensions, not six, were necessary to account for the way hundreds of people reliably reported feeling in response to each video,” explained the senior researcher Dacher Keltner, faculty co-director of the Greater Good Science Center.
In other words, emotions are not states that occur in isolation. Instead, the study suggests that there are gradients of emotion and that these different feelings are deeply inter-related.
The researchers also suggest that better clarifying the nature of our emotions can help scientists, psychologists, and physicians learn more about how emotions underlie brain activity, behavior, and mood. By better understanding these states, he hopes researchers can develop improved treatments for psychiatric conditions.
