How Many Human Emotions Are There?

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Emotionsrule so much of our lives. Even writers and poets seem incapable of describing the full range and experience of human emotions.

The Study of Emotions

As early as the 4th century B.C., Aristotle attempted to identify the exact number of core emotions in humans. Described as Aristotle’s List of Emotion, the philosopher proposed 14 distinct emotional expressions: fear, confidence, anger, friendship, calm, enmity, shame, shamelessness, pity, kindness, envy, indignation, emulation, and contempt.

In his 1872 publicationThe Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals,Charles Darwintheorized that emotions were innate, evolved, and had a functional purpose. While Darwin did not explicitly define these “basic emotions,” it is thought he envisioned a shorter list of essential emotions, including fear, anger, sadness, happiness, and love.

In recent years, psychologists have tried toidentify and categorizethese emotions in a way that is consideredempirical and universal. However, the number of emotions researchers settle on greatly depends on how specifically emotions are defined and the criteria used. For example, in a 2017 study, researchers identified 27 unique emotions.Still, when it comes to the most basic emotions, most psychologists will tell you that are far fewer than one might think and that larger accountings of emotional expression come from more nuanced variations of those basic feelings.

What Emotion Are You? Take the Quiz

Our fast and free emotion quiz can help you better understand your emotional responses to certain situations, and why you may think or behave the way you do.

Plutchik’s Wheel of Emotions

One of the most prominent theories of the 20th century is Robert Plutchik’s wheel of emotions. In it, Plutchik proposed eight basic emotions—joy, sadness, trust, disgust, fear, anger, surprise, and anticipation—which he believed overlapped and bled into the next like hues on a color wheel.

Plutchick further explained that the primary emotional “colors” can combine to form the secondary and complementary emotional “colors.” For example, anticipation plus joy might combine to form optimism, while fear and surprise might together describe awe.

Eckman’s Facial Action Coding System

To this end, psychologist Paul Ekman created what he called the facial action coding system (FACS), a classification model which measures and evaluates the movements of facial muscles as well as those of the eyes and head. Based on his theory, Ekman proposed that there are seven emotional expressions universal to people all over the world: happiness, sadness, surprise, fear, anger, disgust, and contempt.

While Ekman’s work helped highlight the effect of “nature or nurture” on emotional response, much of his theory has since been criticized when, in 2004, he proposed that the same technique could be used as a means oflie detection.

Four Irreducible Emotions

What the researchers found was that certain emotions elicited the same facial response. Fear and surprise, for example, engaged the same facial muscles and, rather than representing two emotions, could be seen one. The same could be applied to disgust and anger or excitement and shock.

Based on their findings, the scientists pared down the number of irreducible emotions to just four: happiness, sadness, anger, and fear. Beyond this, they argued, the more complex variations of emotion have evolved over the millennia under numerous social and cultural influences.

The commonality of facial expressions, they say, is primarily biological (something we are born with) while the distinction between subtle and complex emotional expressions are mainly sociological (things that we, as a culture, have learned and developed over time).

Keep in Mind

Emotions, and how we experience and express them, can be both abundantly apparent or remarkably subtle. The general consensus among scientists today is that the basic emotions, however many there may be, serve as the foundation for the more complex and subtle emotions that make up the human experience.

6 Sources

Verywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read oureditorial processto learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.

Dow J.Aristotle’s Theory of the Emotions: Emotions as Pleasures and Pains.Moral Psychology and Human Action in Aristotle. 2011:47-74. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199546541.003.0003

Mason WA, Capitanio JP.Basic Emotions: A Reconstruction.Emot Rev. 2012;4(3):238-244. doi:10.1177/1754073912439763

Plutchik R.The Nature of Emotions: Human emotions have deep evolutionary roots, a fact that may explain their complexity and provide tools for clinical practice.American Scientist. 2001;89(4):344-350.

Jack RE, Sun W, Delis I, Garrod OG, Schyns PG.Four not six: Revealing culturally common facial expressions of emotion.J Exp Psychol Gen. 2016;145(6):708-30. doi:10.1037/xge0000162

Freitas-Magalhães A.Facial Expression of Emotion.Encyclopedia of Human Behavior. 2012:173-183. doi:10.1016/b978-0-12-375000-6.00387-6

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