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The
Nature of Emotions
by
Plutchik
Figure
1.
Author’s three-dimensional circumplex model describes the relations among
emotion concepts, which are analogous to the colors on a color wheel. The cone’s
vertical dimension represents intensity, and the circle represents
degrees of similarity among the emotions. The eight sectors are designed
to indicate that there are eight primary emotion dimensions defined by the
theory arranged as four pairs of opposites. In the exploded model the emotions
in the blank spaces are the primary dyads—emotions that are mixtures of two of
the primary emotions.
Figure
2.
Although emotional substrates cannot always be discerned in the behavior of
nonhuman animals, many stimuli are experienced by people and animals alike and
result in prototypical behavior followed by, generally, the reestablishment of
an equilibruim state that might not have been achieved without the impulse
precipitated by the inner state. In human experience it is common to use the
term “emotion” to describe the feeling state, but in fact emotion is
considerably more complex.
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