Blog, Pitang.
Andréa Torres
Learn how to better identify your emotions
Career
Throughout the day, we experience a wide variety of different emotions, but we are often unable to identify which ones we are feeling.
Psychologist Robert Plutchik argued that emotions change throughout human evolution to adapt to their context, and he developed a drawing-based resource that facilitates the recognition and understanding of the complexity of emotions.
Robert Plutchik created the Wheel of Emotions. It is a graphic resource shaped like a flower with eight petals of different colors that displays and identifies emotions and the relationships established between them. In this flower, we can identify opposing emotions, intensity, and types of emotions (basic or composite).
Composite emotions are found on the outermost part of the flower and are part of the primary emotional dyad. The combination of basic emotions gives rise to a total of twenty-four composite emotions, classified into three different dyads, giving rise to less frequent emotions.
Emotional dyads
1. Primary dyad
The primary dyad is composed of the combination of adjacent basic emotions:
Joy + Trust = Love
Joy + Anticipation = Optimism
Trust + Fear = Submission
Fear + Surprise = Awe
Surprise + Sadness = Disappointment
Sadness + Disgust = Remorse
Disgust + Anger = Contempt
Anger + Anticipation = Aggressiveness
2. Secondary dyad
The secondary dyad is formed by the combination of basic emotions with one degree of separation:
Joy + Fear = Guilt
Joy + Anger = Pride
Trust + Surprise = Curiosity
Trust + Anticipation = Fatalism
Fear + Sadness = Despair
Surprise + Disgust = Disbelief
Sadness + Anger = Envy
Disgust + Anticipation = Cynicism
3. Tertiary dyad
The tertiary dyad is the result of mixing basic emotions with two degrees of separation:
Joy + Surprise = Delight
Joy + Disgust = Morbidness
Trust + Sadness = Sentimentality
Trust + Anger = Dominance
Fear + Disgust = Shame
Fear + Anticipation = Anxiety
Surprise + Anger = Outrage
Sadness + Anticipation = Pessimism
The Wheel of Emotions in daily life
We have learned that Plutchik's Wheel of Emotions can provide us with several applications in daily life, such as:
Enabling the identification of emotions more clearly and accurately;
Helping to identify the triggers or events that prompt unhealthy emotions;
Promoting empathy and understanding of others' emotions;
Managing and directing emotions thanks to better emotional understanding.
The Wheel of Emotions is an extremely valuable resource and can be useful for many different purposes.
How about allowing yourself to get to know your emotions a little better?
