Emotional Value

247

APPENDIX AEMOTIONS: RESEARCH BACKGROUND

If emotions are difficult to define and measure, they are also difficult to name. One psychologist has listed 213 different emotions,¹ while another combed through Roget’s Thesaurus and identified 400 emotion words.² Not to be outdone, yet another identified 500 emotion-related words.³

Within the field of social psychology, much time and effort has been spent on simplifying these lengthy lists of emotions. Paul Ekman, at San Francisco State University, for example, spent years reducing these cumbersome lists to just six. Ekman maintains that his basic emotions—anger, fear, surprise, disgust, happiness, and sadness—are experienced by everyone.⁴ He also argues that this six-pack of emotions is expressed ...