Scientists discover 27 distinct emotions
For the longest time, humans have believed that the range of human emotion encompassed just six different feeling states: happiness/joy, anger, sadness, fear, disgust, and surprise. However, a research project at the University of California Berkeley has found that there are actually 27 distinct human emotions.
The study divided participants into three groups, and asked them to watch a series of short videos (each about 5 to 10 seconds in length), after which they were to report the emotions the video evoked. Of the more than 2,100 videos in the collection, each was a silent, emotionally evocative scene of moments designed to elicit a response: death, birth, natural disasters, awkward interactions, snakes, suffering, etc.
The first group, who were allowed to freely give whatever emotion they felt after each video generated a list of responses that resulted in a list of 27 emotions. That list was:
Admiration, adoration, aesthetic appreciation, amusement, anger, anxiety, awe, awkwardness, boredom, calmness, confusion, contempt, craving, disappointment, disgust, empathic pain, entrancement, envy, excitement, fear, guilt, horror, interest, joy, nostalgia, pride, relief, romance, sadness, satisfaction, sexual desire, surprise, sympathy, and triumph.
The second and third group used the responses of the first group to rank their emotional response, which led scientists to discover that people generally shared the same emotional responses to the same videos, solidifying the finding of 27 emotions.
In presenting their findings, the study’s authors created an interactive map to display each of the 27 emotions. On the map, the emotions are laid out to reflect their connections with each other, supporting the researchers’ finding that there are smooth gradients between each emotion.
How many emotions do you think you feel every day?