Plutchik’s Wheel of Emotions – A Simple Summary

Plutchik’s Wheel

Robert Plutchik identified eight primary emotions (joy, trust, fear, surprise, sadness, disgust, anger, and anticipation). He suggested that these emotions are actually four pairs of opposites, and depicted them on a wheel with opposites opposing each other. In his depiction:

• joy opposes sadness,
• trust opposes disgust,
• fear opposes anger, and
• surprise opposes anticipation.

Intensity of emotions

You’ll notice in the model that each of the eight primary emotions is shown as a distinct colour, radiating in and out from the centre of the wheel.

This is intended to show that each of the core emotions can be experienced in different levels of intensity, giving rise to a range of emotional descriptor words reflecting these different intensities, but all aligned to the core emotions.

In this model, the most intense emotional states exist in the centre of the wheel, and the strength of the core emotion dissipates as you move out towards the edge of the wheel. This gradation of intensity is represented by the depth of the colours used in the wheel. 

This ability to grade the intensity of our emotions can be helpful when exploring how our emotions can change over time in the different situations we experience.

Blending emotions

You’ll notice that the way the wheel is structured leaves spaces between the emotional spokes, as they radiate out from the centre.

These gaps are used to show the idea that our basic emotions can be blended (a further extension of the artist’s palette metaphor) to create newer and more nuanced feelings. For example, combining joy and trust produces love, while anticipation and joy might result in optimism.

Emotions and Evolution

While we don’t explore the depth of connection to evolution here work, Plutchik very much aligned his work on emotions to the evolutionary function that emotions serve.

Per his work and framing, each of the primary and secondary emotions in his wheel are associated with specific behavioural and evolutionary mechanisms that have helped humans adapt to their environments. A few examples are as follow:

• Fear, is linked to the survival mechanism of protection, triggering the ‘fight or flight’ response in the face of danger,
• Anger is much the same in terms of preparing the ‘fight or flight’ response,
• Grief may introduce a depressed state of being, reducing the risk of accident when a group has lost a member, and
• Disgust may motivate us to avoid potentially dangerous interactions, people or foods.

There’s a load of great additional reading you could do in relation to this topic including some more articles we’ve written:

• Perhaps looking at some of the domains of Emotional Intelligence is helpful, as is exploring Amygdala Hijacking moments.
• We also think that self-talk,  meta-emotion and meta-cognition are interesting and helpful concepts when thinking about our emotions.
• The idea of career narratives and personal values might also be interesting, as they may shape how we construct our emotions and predict our futures.
• We particularly like Lisa Feldman-Barret’s work on how emotions are formed.
• As ever, beware of the replication crisis.

Overall we really like this simple little visual tool. We find it intuitive, attractive and able to convey a lot of helpful information in a way that people find easy to relate to.

We typically use this tool as a conversation starter with participants in workshops, and so only take a light touch approach to it.

Our main focus is on helping the people we work with reflect on the range of emotions that they experience on a regular basis, or that they might observe in others. As such, we tend not to explore the nuances of the model or the relationships that exist between the emotions in the model. We typically limit our conversations to the range of emotions, and the depth of emotions, which is sufficient for our purposes.

We do find that the majority of people who we work with already have a decent vocabulary for emotions, and a broad ability to identify and reflect on their own and others emotions. Some people, though, have less skill in this area. Having a tool like the wheel of emotions is a bit of a leveler in the room, and can help people reflect and gain insight, so we value it.

Plutchik, R. (1980). Emotion: A Psychoevolutionary Synthesis. Harper & Row.

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