

Combination of Emotions + FeelingsĪnticipation + Joy = Optimism (with its opposite being disapproval) Or, if we experience feelings of relief after the fear or anxiety leaves our body, we might respond with facial experiences of a smile or raised eyebrows. For example, if we are feeling fear or anxiety, we might start to cry.

Now, because this is your body going into fight or flight mode, we tend to act out on these feelings. Therefore, this can be identified as a psychological response. This is your body’s fight or flight response, all controlled by within your nervous system. When you experience fear, you know that there’s a lot more to it: your stomach turns, your heart races with anxiety, and you might even start sweating or getting full-body chills. Psychologists who study emotional intelligence believe that when we feel either a negative or a positive emotion, we respond in 2 ways: psychological and behavioral. For example, “love” can be broken down into secondary emotions-“affection” and “longing”-and even “affection” can be broken down into tertiary emotions of “liking,” “caring,” and “compassion.”Īlong with emotions, we also have emotional responses.

Robert Plutchik WheelĪlthough Plutchik’s wheel was (and is) one of the best-known concepts about our complex emotions, some people believe that there are only 2 or 3 basic emotions and everything else falls into a hierarchy of secondary emotions and tertiary emotions. He figured this out by developing an emotion wheel. Plutchik’s theory was that there are 8 distinct, basic human emotions: happiness, sadness, fear, anger, disgust, surprise, acceptance, and anticipation. Robert Plutchik was an American Psychologist and Professor who studied human emotions. Well, we can identify them and place them into 8 different categories, based on Robert Plutchik’s theory. Similarly, sadness is the evaluation that your goals are not being satisfied, and anger is the judgment aimed at whatever is blocking the accomplishment of your goals.” Types of Emotions Happiness is the evaluation that your goals are being satisfied, as when winning the lottery solves your financial problems and being asked out holds the promise of satisfying your romantic needs. When we feel a strong emotion or a strong feeling, we tend to act on it, no matter what.Īccording to some scientists: “…emotions are judgments about the extent that the current situation meets your goals. As human beings, we know that we all experience a range of emotions - that’s who we are, as social creatures.
