EMOTION WHEEL HOW TO

Learning to skillfully identify emotions with the wheel will help you navigate through life by nourishing your personal growth, infusing your relationships with empathy, and even fuelling creative processes. So how can you put theory into practice? The key here is to think of the emotion wheel as a compass to the inner world. Different Ways to Use Plutchik’s Emotion Wheel The closer to the center of the wheel the stronger the emotion is felt and the further away from the center of the wheel the emotion isn’t felt as strongly. And they are also experienced in differing degrees of intensity. You can see the opposites and derivatives of these emotions in this Emotion Wheel below:Īs you can see, the combination of basic emotions leads to varying emotions. Plutchik’s eight postulated basic emotions - anger, fear, sadness, disgust, surprise, anticipation, trust, and joy - have polar, corresponding opposites: There exists a small number of basic, primary, or prototype emotions.Īll other emotions are derivatives that occur as combinations or mixtures of these basic, primary, or prototype emotions.Įmotions are constructs or ideas that are used to label or describe experiences.īasic emotions can be conceptualized as pairs that are polar opposites of one another.Īll experienced emotions vary in their degree of difference and similarity to each other.Įvery emotion can exist in differing degrees of intensity or vary in their level of arousal. His psychoevolutionary theory of basic emotions contains 10 postulations: ²īoth animals and humans experience the same emotions in comparable ways.Įmotions have an evolutionary history, they have evolved different forms of expression in various species.Įmotions, therefore, serve as an adaptive role in aiding organisms to handle survival situations posed by environmental pressures.ĭespite the different ways to express emotions in different species, there are commonalities or prototype emotions that can be identified. Plutchik argued that these eight primary emotions all have survival qualities and have evolved to negotiate environmental pressures placed upon an organism. Plutchik believed there were eight primary emotions: anger, fear, sadness, disgust, surprise, anticipation, trust, and joy. In his work, Plutchik proposed a psychoevolutionary classification system for emotional response. His research included studies on suicide, violence, psychotherapy, and, most famously - emotions. He was a prolific researcher, publishing more than 260 articles, 45 chapters, and eight books. Plutchik was a professor emeritus at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and a professor at the University of South Florida. The original wheel of emotions was created by the psychologist Dr. Today, the emotion wheel is widely used in psychology, counseling, and emotional literacy education to help individuals identify, understand, and articulate their emotional states more precisely. Researchers used this theory to standardize the classification of responses in test environments and identify the expression of emotion common to humans experience across languages, cultures, and continents. The theory that accompanies the wheel of emotions posits that primary emotions of anger, fear, sadness, disgust, surprise, anticipation, trust, and joy, served an important adaptive role in evolution: Each emotion trigger behaviors that are key to survival. These researchers basically asked, why do we experience emotions? They hypothesized that emotions serve some kind of evolutionary advantage - and evidence suggests that they were right. The wheel was initially created by researchers within the field of evolutionary psychology to support a theory defining the role of emotions in human development over many centuries. Plutchik’s wheel of emotions, known more broadly as the emotion wheel, is a visual guide to the complete spectrum of human emotion.

EMOTION WHEEL HOW TO

Here’s how to increase your emotional intelligence and be better at life. Therefore, it’s a great idea to place EQ at the top of your self-improvement list. ¹Ī high emotional quotient (EQ) assists decision making, helps stress management, and leads to an increase in overall happiness. So, how can we better understand emotions - and why should we?įor starters, research has shown a higher level of emotional intelligence is linked to higher salaries and increased job satisfaction. An experience that changes the way we interact with the world and the people around us. Whichever way we feel or express our emotions, how we feel is a unique experience to each and every one of us. Others of us are very stoic in our approach, maintaining the appearance that nothing really brings us joy or stresses us out. Some of us find we are more attached to our emotions than others, wearing our hearts on our sleeves.

Emotions are complex, and sometimes out of control.

Emotion wheel