The Search for Basic Emotions

Before reading this you might want to explore your own emotions. One way to help a person do this is to study this web page: Understand, Identify Release Your Emotions. It was written by Mary Kurus. When you return to this page you can explore how you might want to classify your emotions.

In a very simple way the left brain is very logical and linear and is always trying to figure out how the right brain sees the big picture and has more insight into emotions. It is almost impossible to make emotions linear and mathematical. But we can try or at least see how others have done. It would be nice if we could make the emotions into some type of color wheel, and you could describe your feelings as a dash of this or that, or lots of this or that. I wonder if there could be worked out an equation for feelings and emotions.

Later in this web page, I describe seven basic emotions that seem to cover all the many presented on this web page.

Before we start, a word of warning. We must go to meaning, not to the word. Words are just pointers to things. Often people use different words and argue about the words instead of asking for the definition of the words.

Emotions have all sorts of words used to describe them. You can make up your own word combinations. For example the word "love" can mean so many things. We hear phrases such as: "You look lovely", "Make love, not war", "I love to cook", "I love you", "I love, love." Also the word "feel" is used in various ways: "I felt my heart drop", "I feel hurt", "I have no feeling at so ever", "My arm feels sore", or "I have so much feelings for you.

If we are to investigate emotions we have to include the observer. If a person meditates or enjoys classical music, then there a higher vantage point to view one's emotion. There is great joy being spiritual and in love with something above and beyond us.

Emotions and feelings stem from two great sources, namely the body (sickness, tired, etc.) and other people (love, hate, anger, etc.). Often people project "people feelings" on objects (e.g., I love apples).

Before we continue, it would be best to consider Robert Plutchik's psychoevolutionary theory of emotion. His theory is one of the most influential classification approaches for general emotional responses. He chose eight primary emotions - anger, fear, sadness, disgust, surprise, anticipation, trust, and joy. Plutchik proposed that these 'basic' emotions are biologically primitive and have evolved in order to increase the reproductive fitness of the animal. Plutchik argues for the primacy of these emotions by showing each to be the trigger of behaviour with high survival value, such as the way fear inspires the fight-or-flight response.

Plutchik's theory of basic emotions applies to animals as well as to humans and has an evolutionary history that helped oganisms deal with key survival issues. Beyond the basic emotions there are combinations of emotions. Primary emotions can be conceptualized in terms of pairs of polar opposites. Each emotion can exist in varying degrees of intensity or levels of arousal.

Various Lists of Emotions

Cartoonists are interested in spectrums of emotions to aid in their drawings. This site has drawings of over 60 different emotions all neatly arranged.

Which emotions are basic and which are combinations of these? As ever, theorists disagree. Here are some examples:

Theorist	Basic Emotions
Plutchik	Acceptance, anger, anticipation, disgust, joy, fear, sadness, surprise
Arnold	Anger, aversion, courage, dejection, desire, despair, fear, hate, hope, love, sadness
Ekman, Friesen, and Ellsworth	Anger, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, surprise
Frijda	Desire, happiness, interest, surprise, wonder, sorrow
Gray	Rage and terror, anxiety, joy
Izard	Anger, contempt, disgust, distress, fear, guilt, interest, joy, shame, surprise
James	Fear, grief, love, rage
McDougall	Anger, disgust, elation, fear, subjection, tender-emotion, wonder
Mowrer	Pain, pleasure
Oatley and Johnson-Laird	Anger, disgust, anxiety, happiness, sadness
Panksepp	Expectancy, fear, rage, panic
Tomkins	Anger, interest, contempt, disgust, distress, fear, joy, shame, surprise
Watson	Fear, love, rage
Weiner and Graham	Happiness, sadness

Primary emotion	Secondary emotion	Tertiary emotions
Love	Affection	Adoration, affection, love, fondness, liking, attraction, caring, tenderness, compassion, sentimentality
	Lust	Arousal, desire, lust, passion, infatuation
	Longing	Longing
Joy	Cheerfulness	Amusement, bliss, cheerfulness, gaiety, glee, jolliness, joviality, joy, delight, enjoyment, gladness, happiness, jubilation, elation, satisfaction, ecstasy, euphoria
	Zest	Enthusiasm, zeal, zest, excitement, thrill, exhilaration
	Contentment	Contentment, pleasure
	Pride	Pride, triumph
	Optimism	Eagerness, hope, optimism
	Enthrallment	Enthrallment, rapture
	Relief	Relief
Surprise	Surprise	Amazement, surprise, astonishment
Anger	Irritation	Aggravation, irritation, agitation, annoyance, grouchiness, grumpiness
	Exasperation	Exasperation, frustration
	Rage	Anger, rage, outrage, fury, wrath, hostility, ferocity, bitterness, hate, loathing, scorn, spite, vengefulness, dislike, resentment
	Disgust	Disgust, revulsion, contempt
	Envy	Envy, jealousy
	Torment	Torment
Sadness	Suffering	Agony, suffering, hurt, anguish
	Sadness	Depression, despair, hopelessness, gloom, glumness, sadness, unhappiness, grief, sorrow, woe, misery, melancholy
	Disappointment	Dismay, disappointment, displeasure
	Shame	Guilt, shame, regret, remorse
	Neglect	Alienation, isolation, neglect, loneliness, rejection, homesickness, defeat, dejection, insecurity, embarrassment, humiliation, insult
	Sympathy	Pity, sympathy
Fear	Horror	Alarm, shock, fear, fright, horror, terror, panic, hysteria, mortification
Fear	Nervousness	Anxiety, nervousness, tenseness, uneasiness, apprehension, worry, distress, dread

Hunter B. Shirley

Shirely (1983) grouped emotions into the following four categories as described in his book Mapping the Mind .

When one is frustrated the basic emotions change into frustrated emotions (towards the Neurotic State):

When one is beyond frustration, the frustrated emotions become to the point of hopelessness (towards the Insane State):

Earlier Attempts of Mapping the Mind

Many books have been written on how the mind seems to work. Earlier works were very simple approaches to the problem. Hippocrates, for example, classified the mind into the sanguine, phlegmatic, choleric and melancholic. Sprangers grouped the mind into parts: political, religious, social, economic, aesthetic and theoretic. Jung's classified everyone into introverts, ambiverts and extroverts. McDougall presented fourteen instincts, and phrenological charts. Freud's mind map of ego, id, and super ego were akin to the trinity of the soul, the devil and God.

Charles Hampden-Turner, in his Maps of the Mind, carriers diagrams for some sixty "mind-maps". Each diagram presented a theme including: history, religion, physiology, cybernetics, psychobiology, paradogmatic and myth. This book has some historical value, but there is no attempt to provide a cohesive theory of how the mind works.

Base somewhat on Shirely's map of the mind, I have developed my own brain/mind map. It is too large to fit in a web page, so I made it into a PDF file. Below is a simplified table that contains the highlights of the PDF file.

In this diagram the emotions correspond to the different types of memory. Inputs from the physical world impact the cognitive and the emotional components. The output of the brain is controlled by short term, working and long term emotions. Energy for the emotions are supplied by the libido and the list of needs in Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.

Emotions are there to give importance to the journey through life. Strong emotions convey importance. Emotions are generally either positive (e.g., attracting, healthy, learning, a sense of pride) or negative (e.g., disgusting, repelling, sick, embarrassment).

All emotions reference the self. We feel connected to how we feel and often define ourselves by what we feel

Looking at all these ways of emotional classification, I have classified them into six dimensions.

Note that the center is the self. Other people help define the self. One then expands their insight through study of what is right and wrong, good and bad which leads to spiritual insight and emotions. All the emotions are a function of strength and time. What I mean by time is the past (memory) and the future (plans and worry). Thus someone could worry a little (strength) about the future (time) about a friend (other people).

By using strength and time as overall dimensions, one can mix these factors with the other emotions. Thus anxiety and fear are part of the time dimension as one is concerned about the future. Time (e.g., anxiety and fear) could effect the self (e.g., feeling afraid they will get caught, or fear of another person, or fear of something they read) or spiritual dimension (e.g., going to hell),

The reader might find it interesting to try to fit the words listed below into their own dimensional scheme.

Helpful Word Definitions

The Emotion and Feeling List

With four groups of emotions contain four emotions each, we have a total of sixteen emotions or 256 possible combinations. Combined with different energy levels and simultaneous emotions, the result is a huge spectrum of emotions. Some of the emotions in the spectrum are listed below.

This list of emotions show how wide emotions can run. Note that most feelings are shared with animals whereas only the lower (often evil) emotions are shared with animals. Other more human emotions are enhanced by the virtues we acquire in life.

According to Abraham Hicks our inner being guides us through our emotions. As you move up the emotional scale (below) you will open passageways to well being that reach far beyond. We have an emotional set point that defines our highest emotional awareness. Working near our set point we can only raise up our emotions one level at a time.

In order to continue consider the little green man problem. The image at the back of the eye's retina is somehow passed to the consciousness mind via a viewing screen as of the "entertainment center" in the brain that we see as the real outer world. It is only a picture of the outer world, much like a television set is a picture of what is picked up on a television camera.

Who is watching the this screen? It is the little green man inside us. The little green man is where the buck stops, it is the experiencer of life, that which is truly us. The only problem with this little green man theory is that for the little green man to see it takes another entertainment center and another little green man to watch it.

This little green man has another green man inside it too and this continues to infinity.

The best way around this problem is to postulate another dimension where consciousness exists, where there is only one green man who knows that he knows. You might think of it as a cloud of beingness, a spirit, an essence, and the true person behind all the body functions.

If we are a little green men in another dimension, then what about emotions. Could they be like physical objects in a higher dimension? Do we sense God as a feeling on this plane?

Chapter 13

Emotions

Various Lists of Emotions

Hunter B. Shirley

Earlier Attempts of Mapping the Mind

Helpful Word Definitions

The Emotion and Feeling List