THE ROUGH GUIDE TO PSYCHOLOGYHOW MANY EMOTIONS ARE THERE?
Philosophers and psychologists have been grappling with this question
for centuries. The grandfather of psychology, Wilhelm Wundt (see p.8),
proposed that all emotions can be located along three dimensions –
pleasantness vs. unpleasantness, excitement vs. depression, and tension
vs. relaxation. This view was lent some credence by modern research
showing that people find it easy to classify emotional words according
to Wundt’s first two dimensions. Other experts, including Paul Ekman,
have followed Darwin’s lead by arguing that there are a fixed number of
“core” emotions, classifiable according to their distinctive and univer-
sally recognized facial expressions: happiness, disgust, surprise, sadness,
anger and fear. But if Ekman and Darwin are right, how come we use
hundreds of different words to describe our emotions?
The answer lies with another school of thought – championed by
“appraisal theorists” like Klaus Scherer of the Centre for Affective
Sciences in Geneva – which states there are probably as many emotions
as there are meaningful situations to be encountered. By this account,
while different types of facial expression are commonly associated
with certain kinds of emotion, no two emotional experiences are ever
identical. The numerous words we use to label emotions reflect the
way, along with the use of metaphor and analogy, we struggle to convey
something of what our emotions feel like.