Plutchik's Wheel
What is it?
Plutchik's Wheel is a tool that helps you visualize the different emotions that people can experience.
Plutchik's Wheel of Emotions is a model developed by psychologist Robert Plutchik in 1980 to help visualize and understand the complex relationships between different emotions. The wheel is designed like a flower, with eight primary emotions positioned as petals around the center. These primary emotions are:
- Joy
- Trust
- Fear
- Surprise
- Sadness
- Disgust
- Anger
- Anticipation
The emotions are paired in opposites, with joy and sadness, trust and disgust, fear and anger, and surprise and anticipation placed across from each other on the wheel.
Plutchik's Wheel also illustrates that emotions can vary in intensity. For example, a milder form of anger might be annoyance, while a more intense form could be fury. The closer an emotion is to the center of the wheel, the stronger it is.
In addition to the primary emotions, Plutchik's Wheel demonstrates that emotions can mix to form secondary emotions. For example:
- Joy and trust combine to form love.
- Trust and fear combine to form submission.
- Fear and surprise combine to form awe.
- Surprise and sadness combine to form disapproval.
- Sadness and disgust combine to form remorse.
- Disgust and anger combine to form contempt.
- Anger and anticipation combine to form aggression.
- Anticipation and joy combine to form optimism.
Using Plutchik's Wheel, we can better understand the emotions we experience in our everyday lives. For instance, if you're feeling a combination of sadness and anger, you might be experiencing resentment. If you're feeling a mix of joy and anticipation, you may be feeling optimistic about a future event. By understanding the relationships between emotions, we can better identify, process, and communicate our feelings.
Plutchik's Wheel of Emotions is a comprehensive model developed by psychologist Robert Plutchik (1980) to represent the complex relationships among emotions, their intensities, and their combinations. The wheel is structured as a radial diagram with eight primary emotions arranged like petals around the center, each paired with its opposite: joy-sadness, trust-disgust, fear-anger, and surprise-anticipation. The model emphasizes that emotions can vary in intensity and can blend to form secondary and tertiary emotions.
Plutchik's Wheel can be related to several principles and scientific topics, including:
Emotional theories: Plutchik's model contributes to the understanding of emotions and their organization, complementing other theories such as the basic emotion theory by Ekman (1992), the appraisal theory by Lazarus (1991), and the dimensional models by Russell (1980).
Emotion regulation: Understanding the relationships between emotions can help individuals develop emotion regulation strategies, which involve identifying, evaluating, and modifying emotional reactions in adaptive ways (Gross, 1998).
Affective neuroscience: Plutchik's Wheel can serve as a framework for investigating the neural correlates of emotions, as well as their evolutionary and developmental aspects (Panksepp, 1998).
Artificial intelligence and affective computing: Plutchik's model can be applied in developing algorithms and systems that recognize, interpret, and simulate human emotions, thereby enhancing human-computer interaction (Picard, 1997).
References
Plutchik, R. (1980). A general psychoevolutionary theory of emotion. In R. Plutchik & H. Kellerman (Eds.), Emotion: Theory, Research, and Experience: Vol. 1. Theories of emotion (pp. 3-33). Academic Press.
Ekman, P. (1992). An argument for basic emotions. Cognition and Emotion, 6(3-4), 169-200. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699939208411068
Lazarus, R. S. (1991). Emotion and adaptation. Oxford University Press.
Russell, J. A. (1980). A circumplex model of affect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 39(6), 1161-1178. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0077714
Gross, J. J. (1998). The emerging field of emotion regulation: An integrative review. Review of General Psychology, 2(3), 271-299. https://doi.org/10.1037/1089-2680.2.3.271
Panksepp, J. (1998). Affective neuroscience: The foundations of human and animal emotions. Oxford University Press.
Picard, R. W. (1997). Affective computing. MIT Press.