'Humans also have secondary emotions, which are emotional reactions to an emotion such as the feeling of shame when angry or feeling fear as a result of anger.'Īccording to research by psychologist David L. 'The eight primary emotions in the emotion wheel are sadness, anger, disgust, joy, trust, fear, surprise, and anticipation,' Espinoza explains. Through his psychoevolutionary approach, he asserted that our basic emotions play a role in human survival and can be patterned out to reveal common emotional elements that we all go through. Instead of casting emotions aside as too mysterious or vague for our interpretation, he wanted to understand their biological basis and the connections between them. To make it easier to recognize and describe our feelings, the wheel was gridded out in a way to demonstrate emotions in its various states, dyads, constructs, combinations, similarities, and dissimilarities. He believed that while humans have the capacity to experience over 34,000 unique emotions, there are eight primary, primordial emotions that serve as the foundation for other feelings, in all of their degrees and intensities, to exist and take place.

Psychologist Robert Plutchik, Ph.D., created one of the most popular versions of the emotion wheel, a flower-shaped diagram to visually illustrate our emotions and their various, adjacent relationships to each other.

The tool has many variations (also known as the Junto, Geneva, or feelings wheel), but the wheel's overall goal is to clarify what's happening in our inner world, home in on the specific nuances of that emotional state, and understand the depth and purpose behind those emotions.

Color wheel for emotions