Basic Emotions

Paul Ekman’s model outlines six core emotions: happiness (joyful expression with smiling), sadness (tears and downturned mouth), anger (furrowed brows and glare), fear (wide eyes for threat detection), surprise (raised eyebrows), and disgust (wrinkled nose to avoid harm). These trigger adaptive behaviors, such as fight-or-flight in fear or social bonding in happiness. A seventh, contempt, sometimes appears with a unilateral lip curl.[online.uwa +2]

Alternative Models

Robert Plutchik’s wheel proposes eight primaries: joy, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, disgust, trust, and anticipation, which blend into secondaries like love (joy + trust). Dimensional theories view emotions on axes like valence (pleasant-unpleasant) and arousal (high-low), encompassing 27+ interconnected states. Cultural variations affect expression but not the core experiences.[reddit +3]