There are fewer basic emotions than psychologists originally thought
Posted by Josh Taylor / February 5, 2014 basic emotionbasic emotionsdisgusthuman emotions
Previously, psychologists believed there were six basic human emotions: anger, fear, sadness, happiness, surprise, and disgust. But by examining facial muscles, scientists have discovered there might only be four:
To reach their conclusions, Jack et al. (2014) looked at how the muscles in the face move when expressing a variety of emotions.
They found that fear and surprise shared a common signal–the eyes are wide open–suggesting they only constitute one basic emotion, not two.
Similarly, for anger and disgust they found that the nose initially wrinkles. Anger and disgust may, therefore, constitute only one basic emotion.
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This doesn’t suggest that our emotions are any less complex, just that the basic building blocks could be four rather than six.
Full story at PsyBlog.
Photo credit: Fotolia
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