Part of the difficulty is because our experiences are so complex and involve so many different factors, so distinguishing one emotion from another is a lot like drawing lines of sand in the desert. It can be hard to determine where one emotions ends or another begins. Even when we analyze a commonsense emotion like “happiness” or “anger,” we know from everyday experience that these emotions come in many different degrees, qualities, and intensities. In addition, our experiences are often comprised of multiple emotions at once, which adds another dimension of complexity to our emotional experience.

Despite how difficult these distinctions may be, plenty of psychologists have attempted to classify our emotions into different categories. Early philosophy of mind posited that all emotions could be categorized as either “pleasure” or “pain,” but since then more in depth theories have been put forth. In this post I want to go over some of the main theories that have been researched over the past half century.

Ekman’s List of Basic Emotions (1972)

Ekman devised his list of basic emotions after doing research on many different cultures. He would describe a situation and ask individuals to choose a facial expression that best fit. He would also show photographs of different facial expressions and ask individuals to identify the emotion. Across all cultures studied, Ekman found 6 basic emotions:

• Anger
• Disgust
• Fear
• Happiness
• Sadness
• Surprise

Ekman added to this list in the 1990s, but stated that not all of these can be encoded via facial expressions:

• Amusement
• Contempt
• Contentment
• Embarrassment
• Excitement
• Guilt
• Pride in achievement
• Relief
• Satisfaction
• Sensory pleasure
• Shame

Plutchik’s Wheel of Emotions (1980)

Robert Plutchik created a new conception of emotions in 1980. He called it the “wheel of emotions” because it demonstrated how different emotions can blend into one another and create new emotions. Plutchik first suggested 8 primary bipolar emotions: joy versus sadness; anger versus fear; trust versus disgust; and surprise versus anticipation. From there Plutchik identified more advanced emotions based on their differences in intensities. If you look at the diagram below you can see how each emotion relates to the other:

Parrots’ Classification of Emotions (2001)

The most nuanced classification of emotions so far is probably Parrots’ 2001 theory. Parrot identified over 100+ emotions and conceptualized them as a tree structured list:

Research of Emotions In The Future

As you can tell, there is a lot of disparity on how researchers choose to group different emotions. It’s amazing to me how despite all the technology and scientific advancements we’ve made, we still don’t have a clear-cut answer on how many emotions the human mind is capable of experiencing. I assume that future research is going to build on the above theories and start identifying the neural correlates between each emotion (measured through fMRI brain scans). Neuroscience is probably the only way to determine an “objective” measure of what emotions we have and how they related to one another. Unfortunately, there is still a lot of research to be done, so we are probably going to have to sit and wait until we can learn more about the emotional aspects of the human mind.

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Some like to blame corporations and mass advertising for our consumer culture, but I also believe it is partly our fault for accepting the lies that are constantly fed to us. Society, as a whole, seems like a very gullible bunch. Like savaged wolves we still like to travel in packs, always voting Republican or Democrat, always turning on our favorite TV shows, and constantly investing our time and effort into the same old patterns of thought.

Especially in this age of information, our minds are always being filled – like a sponge – yet at the end of the day we rarely if ever take the time to reflect, contemplate, and introspect on what ideas we should keep and what ideas we should throw away. We have become programmed by a culture filled with deception. It is not about who holds the truth, but who is the best persuader.

Be A Healthy Skeptic
Looking through our list of cognitive biases, it is hard not to be alarmed at all the different ways one can be duped. A big part of critical thinking is to be aware of these biases, another part is to always be what I call a healthy skeptic. By this I mean we should always leave room for doubt and always have the flexibility to change our views in the face of new information.

No kind of dogma, whether through religious authority or political consensus, should be held blindly as a truth – unless it stands to our own reason. People can certainly suggest ideas to us, but it is only through each individual’s critical thinking (or lack of) which determines if we accept an idea or not.

But even our own faculty of reason can be faulty. No individual is perfect or has all the information in the world; as the philosopher and scientist Alfred Korzybski points out, the map is never the territory, if it were it would have to be the same as the ground it covers. Since we are beings that can acknowledge our own ignorance, we must also include a healthy dose of skepticism in whatever it is we choose to believe regarding life. If we choose not to, we will surely find ourselves in the same cycles of behaviors and outcomes, and therefore never progress.

The Function Of Beliefs
A belief is confidence in the truth or existence of something without proof. For example, one can believe that “everyone is a good person at heart despite their actions,” but that is not a claim that can be properly falsified or proven (and therefore it is not a matter of science according to the philosopher Karl Popper). A belief is true only so far as it permeates each individual’s perspective. It is high-chunked information based on our everyday experience.

So despite beliefs inherit non-truthfulness in the face of scientific rigor, the human perspective necessitates that we hold beliefs about our existence in order to function effectively in our world.

Knowing that we all hold beliefs, we can begin understand why being a healthy skeptic is so important. A belief is only as important as it is a positive influence to our actions. And even our belief in what is a “positive influence” is a subject we should always debate (both in our heads and amongst friends).

So while I preach a philosophy of consistent skepticism, I also want to acknowledge that having beliefs, opinions, and presuppositions are important and necessary. They are information about how we view the world. The key is to be flexible with those views (and always willing to change in the face of new experience and evidence).

Reflection And Introspection
One important aspect to critical thinking is to contemplate why we believe the things we do. Why? is always the big question, and the more we ask it and attempt to answer it, the more we are aware of our patterns of thinking and our false assumptions.

The deeper we dig into our inquiries the closer we come to answers of “I just don’t know.” Acknowledging this ignorance can become an amazing insight, because to know what you know and know what you don’t know – that is true knowledge.

Introspection is such a great tool because it allows us to re-track the steps of our experiences and take notice of things we may have took for granted the first time around.

As far as we know, humans have the greatest ability to reflect on their experiences, but they aren’t the only animals to exhibit these characteristics. Studies have shown that when lab rats are given a chance to experience downtime after going through a maze, they are likely to learn the maze quicker than other rats who are simply put through trial-after-trial.

Researchers theorize through brain scans (although they can’t know the mind of a rat for certain) that this downtime is spent replaying memories. They paid particular attention to the hippocampus, an important structure of the brain responsible for learning. Researchers think this act of replaying memories may be a general mechanism of learning, and perhaps it explains the memory-formation theories behind dreams (which too can be seen as another kind of introspection).

What This All Boils Down To
The message I want my readers to walk away with is that our minds are incredibly powerful tools, and it is important that we actively and consciously use it to our advantage. I believe that sometimes we take our ability to think for granted and in the process we forget how to separate a lot of bullshit from the truth.

No scientist, politician, relative, or movie star can use our brains for us. And when it comes down to how we think of our world we need to distinguish between what we are told from what we believe to be true through our own experience and reason.

The study (PDF download) was done by several researchers at the Emotion, Health, And Psychophysiology Laboratory at Harvard University. It is further evidence on the power of positive appraisal on physiology and performance. One of the researchers, Wendy Berry Mendes, says this effect may even be stronger for athletes, “because physical exertion drives up adrenaline levels, they’ve got even more nervous energy to channel.” (PT, p. 14)

I one time read that the adrenaline rush we feel from something like a roller-coaster or an exciting movie is very biochemically similar to the stress response we experience before something like a job interview or a hard day at work.

The raw energy in itself is never necessarily a bad thing; it all depends on where we direct it. If we are wasting it all on concerns, worries, and negative thoughts, then we have less energy to concentrate on doing a good job. The same is true no matter what environment you are in, whether it is in the office, at home, or on a football field.

But when students in the experiment were told that their nervousness was positive, they were probably no longer thinking, “Oh no! I am so worried that my mind might go blank!” and instead their inner voice began saying, “Aha, I feel the energy and I am pumped!”

The meaning behind the emotion makes all the difference. It is the arrow telling us where to focus our attention; and where attention goes, energy flows.

With practice I believe we could all do better at transforming our negative energies – like anxiety, frustration and depression – into a more focused and positive form of concentrated energy, like that which I describe in my recent article on flow.

The power of belief and meaning

The only difference between the two groups of students was that one believed their nervousness was good; so when they became more aroused during the exam it meant something positive and beneficial was occurring.

How we interpret the meaning of our internal experiences can have a world of difference in how we behave and act. Two individuals can have very similar pasts and memories, but one may look back at those memories and feel crippled, while another looks back and is inspired by all the things they have learned.

While we may not always choose what we experience, it is always the individual who chooses what to take away from that experience – and that is part of what makes humans so self-empowering (and at the same time so self-defeating).

When something negative is happening to us we often feel helpless, as if it is out of our control; but if we take our experience and put a positive frame around it, then it becomes an ability and not a crutch.

Click here to read a more recent article I wrote about beliefs: Beliefs and Your Map of Reality.

Letting the energy build

The students who were told that nervousness was a good thing also showed greater signs of stress through a saliva test. This may imply that because students found their nervousness to be positive, they were less willing to fight or resist it, and more willing to let it build up. The more, the better – right?

And maybe they are right, because the more energy that builds up, the more focus they can apply towards answering questions correctly. Perhaps it was even this difference that allowed these students to score better on the GRE in the first place – they let the energy flow through them.

Too fanciful or a path towards a better self?

I admit these findings and suggestion can sometimes sound a bit too fanciful or idealistic. At the very least channeling our energy in such a way is “easier said than done.” But certainly this is something worth practicing.

If through the power of our beliefs we can shape our reality in subtle but effective ways, then this is something worth our effort and attention. Hopefully future studies will reveal more about these psychophysiological mechanisms and how we can use them to build both a better self and a better world.

Within the lecture he cites a study done by MIT Professors David Foster and Matthew Wilson, one which Sahar found rather convincing regarding the importance of reflection in our everyday lives and specifically its effects on our cognitive abilities.

In this study researchers looked inside the brains of rats. They paid particular attention to the hippocampus, a brain structure that has shown to be responsible for learning and memory in rodents, primates, and humans. They performed brain scans on rats as they went through a maze, and then also after the experience, during times of reflection.

“What the results suggest is that while there certainly is some record of your experience as it is occurring (in other words when the rats were running the maze), the actual learning – when you try to figure out: ‘What was important? What should I keep and throw away?’ – that happens after the fact, during periods of quiet wakeful introspection.”

Rats who were given a chance to relax and reflect showed better signs of learning than rats who were not given a chance to relax and reflect. Scientists have implied that it could be that “replaying a sequence of behavioral events in our mind” is an important mechanism in effective learning and memory retention.

Further Implications

If we can reinforce learning by actively replaying memories then certainly there is good reason to practice wakeful introspection. Like Sahar, we should set aside a time and place for it. Even by reflecting on negative events, we can extract lessons from our old ways and thus learn to gain something positive from them. The implications of this study are more than just getting rats to run through mazes faster, it can also have a significant effect on building new habits and improving the quality of life.

On this site I often write about the importance of relaxation on our health and happiness. To know that these exercises can also improve our cognition and learning is just another good incentive to continue practicing these everyday.

Most of us have grown up in a culture surrounded by noise, clutter, and busy-ness. There is sometimes even a disdain for silence; we find it awkward, unproductive, or boring. But maybe we are just not very good at it? Perhaps this modern culture also explains how we have left society with so many children with ADHD and other learning disabilities.

Is it really so hard to find the time for a little peaceful reflection? Even just 5 or 10 minutes a day is enough to start seeing the difference. We could easily accomplish this during a lunch hour or after dinner. It is a good way to soak in everything that has happened to us throughout the day and at the same time relax all the tensions from family, relationships, and work. It gives us time to ask, “Am I staying on course? Am I doing the right things? Am I improving myself?” These are just some of the questions we can ask to better ourselves.

Information And Transformation

All knowledge is processed knowledge. We don’t know things in the form of their raw sensory experience, but the form in which we conceptualize them. We then integrate these concepts into our representation of the world, just like the rat does when it makes a mental map of a maze.

As Sahar describes in his lecture, information is the sensory data of what we experience and transformation is the map we create from that data. When we reflect we are re-initiating this process of transformation by deriving new meaning from our memories.

During transformation we decide what parts of the experience were most important and worth paying attention to. When our mental schema doesn’t work, we can always reflect back, re-focus, and adjust our understanding of that experience. Although this may seem like commonsense, very few people actively practice this technique.

Sahar believes that the road to improvement isn’t necessarily about getting more and more information, but transforming our understanding of the information we already have. This requires us to look inside at what we already know and to use that knowledge in a more effective manner. The educational tools and resources are all already there inside of us.

Chopra spends the second half answering questions on diverse issues like love, healthcare, dreaming, the joys of music, business philosophy, and his experience with LSD, plus more. The whole video is a little over an hour, but it is chockful of good information and definitely worth checking out. To see Chopra so lucidly integrate such a vast scope of knowledge is truly an incredible experience.