Emotions are a crucial part of who you are, but they can sometimes be complicated, messy, and completely confusing. Developing emotional health with yourself and others requires knowing how to talk about them.
Psychologists have too tried to identify the different types of emotions that people experience. As a result, several different theories have emerged to categorize and explain people’s emotions.
I had earlier shared: How To Deal With A Depressed Person? I hope you read.
Table of Contents
How many emotions humans have?
Recent research suggests that there are 27 different emotions, all of which are deeply interconnected. After examining the responses of more than 800 men to 2,000 video clips, researchers created an interactive chart to show how these emotions are related to one another.
Basic Emotions
Universally experienced six basic emotions that he suggested in all human cultures. The emotions he identified were:
- Happiness
- Sadness
- Fear
- Disgust
- Surprise
- Anger
He later developed his list of basic emotions to include shame, pride, embarrassment, and excitement.
Keep in your mind that this is just one way of categorizing emotions. For example, current research suggests that there are 27 categories of emotion. But five main types of emotion offer a good frame for breaking down the complexity of all the feels.
So let’s see what each of these five categories consists of.
I recommend you to read following posts that will help you to more about human emotions : What Is Mood Disorder?
Happiness
People usually like to feel very happy, good, and calm. So you might express these feelings by laughing, smiling, or indulging yourself.
You feel enjoyment when:
- You are closer and more connected to the people you care about.
- You feel secure.
- You are doing something that triggers sensory pleasure.
- You’re absorbed in an activity.
- You feel relaxed and at peace.
If happiness and its related feelings feel difficult, try to take a look at other emotions that are getting in the way, such as:
- Stress
- Worry
- Trouble in focusing
- A low or anxious mood.
Sadness
Everyone feels unhappy from time to time. Of course, this emotion relates to an event, such as a loss or rejection. But in other cases, you have no idea why you feel sad.
Sadness can also be hard to move, but depending on the situation, these tips might help:
- Mourn. Mourning is a part of grief. Whether you’re trying to heal from a loss, change, breakup, or failure to achieve a goal, acknowledging your loss can also help you accept and work through it. Everyone mourns in their way, so do what feels right to you.
- Reach out for some support. This is easy to do whenever you are at a weak point. Try to remember people in your life who care for you and truly want to help you. The pain of grief does ease in time, even if you can’t believe that at the moment.
To learn more, you can read What Does Grief Do To Your Body?
Fear
Fear is a strong emotion that can play an important role in survival. When you face any danger and experience fear, you go for what is known as the fight or flight response.
Your muscles become very tense, your heart rate increase, and your mind become alert, priming your body to either run from the danger.
This response helps guarantee that you are prepared to deal with your threats. Expressions of this type of emotion can also include:
- Facial expressions: Such as widening your eyes and pulling back your chin.
- Physiological reactions: Such as breathing and rapid heartbeat.
- Body language: Attempts to hide from the threat.
Fear is a normal emotion — and one that kept your ancestors from being eaten alive — but there are some things you can do to fight it:
- Confront fear instead of avoiding it.
- Distract yourself from your fear.
- Consider the fear logically.
Don’t get confused if these tips seem impossible or overwhelming — they can be hard to accomplish on your own. Instead, consider working with a therapist who can help you navigate panic attacks, phobias, anxiety, and other mental health issues around fear.
I also wrote a article on What Is The Most Common Phobia? also you can read.
Disgust
Disgust is another of the original 6 basic emotions described by Eckman. It also can display disgust in several ways, including:
- Physical reactions: Such as retching or vomiting.
- Body language: Turning off from the object of disgust.
- Facial expressions: Such as curling the upper lip and wrinkling the nose.
Poor hygiene, blood, infection, rot, and death can trigger a disgust response. This can be the body’s way of avoiding things that carry transmittable diseases.
Anger
Anger can also be an especially strong emotion characterized by feelings of agitation, hostility, frustration, and antagonism towards others. Like fear, anger plays a part in your body’s fight or flight response.
When a threat creates feelings of anger, you can be inclined to fend off the danger and protect yourself. Anger is often displayed through:
- Facial expressions: Frowning or glaring.
- Body language: such as taking a strong stand or turning away.
- Tone of voice: Speaking yelling or gruffly.
- Physiological responses: Sweating or turning red.
- Aggressive behaviors: such as kicking, hitting, or throwing objects.
When anger becomes a problem, it is excessive or expressed in unhealthy, dangerous, or harmful ways. Uncontrolled anger quickly turns to aggression, violence, or abuse.
This type of emotion has both mental and physical consequences. For example, unchecked anger makes it difficult to make rational decisions and even impacts your physical health.
Frequently Asked Question
How many emotions are there in 2022?
But a new study from Greater Good Science Center faculty director Dacher Keltner presents that there are at least 27 distinct emotions and they are intimately connected.
How many human emotions exist?
In previous thought, it was understood that there were six distinct human emotions – sadness,happiness, fear, anger, surprise, and disgust. But scientists have now found that the number is as many as 27.
How many emotions does the average person experience in a day?
We computed the percentage of the time people reported feeling an emotion; that is, the frequency of moments for which participants indicated they experienced at least one of the 18 emotions on the list. On average, people reported experiencing one or several emotions 90% of the time.
How do emotions affect our daily lives?
Emotion substantially influences human cognitive processes, including perception, attention, learning, memory, reasoning, and problem-solving. Emotion has a particularly strong influence on attention, especially modulating the selectivity of attention and motivating action and behavior.
Conclusion
Emotion is an important part of how we live our lives, from influencing how we engage with others in our day-to-day lives to affecting our decisions. By understanding the different types of emotions, you also can understand how these emotions are shown and their impact on your behavior.
It is vital to remember, however, that no emotion is an island. Instead, the various emotions you experience are complex and nuanced, working together to create the rich and varied fabric of your emotional life.
A few other articles that you might be interested in:
If you find the information in this post useful, please share it with your friends and colleagues on Face book, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Sharing is caring ❤