The Eight Basic Emotions

In my last post I failed to mention one tiny thing. I hate roller coasters. Actually, theme parks in general are not my idea of a fun way to spend my afternoon. It’s been this way for me since I was a kid. While everyone else is having a blast, I’m tortured. And I’ve always hated myself for feeling this way—until I found my husband. He hates them too. There’s comfort in knowing that I’m not alone in this.

Before I sort out my emotions regarding roller coasters, let’s look at our first lesson in emotion training. Daniel Goleman in his bestseller Emotional Intelligence tells us that emotions are impulses to act, “the instant plans for handling life that evolution has instilled in us.” Robert Plutchik’s emotion theory proposes that there are eight primary or basic emotions derived from eight basic behavioral patterns, which do not depend on introspection (i.e., the rational brain.).

Remember the color wheel from art class? The wheel showing the relationships between hues? On the color wheel there are three primary colors: red, yellow, and blue. Like the color wheel, the emotion wheel also has primary emotions, but instead of three there are eight and they are: joy, trust (or acceptance), surprise, fear, sadness, disgust, anger, and anticipation. Of these eight, some can be considered positive emotions and some negative emotions. In the above wheel, warm colors (red, orange, yellow) represent emotions thought of as being positive and cool colors (blues) represent emotions thought of as being negative. Greens and violets could belong to either.

So, you’re standing in a 30 minute line to ride a roller coaster. You see the cars returning. The people’s hair mussed from the wind, smiles plastered across their faces. The train of cars comes to a screeching halt and bodies exit stumbling over each other, giggling. Voices are raised in excitement and you hear one describe the thrill of the last loop on the track.

Let’s look at the emotion wheel. These riders are feeling joy in reaction to the ride. Logically, then, us in the queue line should be feeling anticipation, and more particularly, anticipating the joy we will experience based on others reactions. Not me. Although I am feeling anticipation, my second emotion on the wheel is different. It’s fear. Why? Because my emotional brain has taken over my rational brain.

The reason I hate roller coasters is because when I stand in line waiting to go, the fear overtakes me and I hate it. But why do we feel fear? What does fear feel like? How can a writer describe a character’s feeling of fear?