Dr. Robert Plutchik’s psychoevolutionary theory of emotion is one of the most influential classification approaches for general emotional responses. He suggested eight primary emotions–anger, fear, sadness, disgust, surprise, anticipation, trust, and joy. Dr. Plutchik proposed that these ‘basic’ emotions are biologically primitive and have evolved in order to increase the reproductive fitness of the animal. Plutchik argues for the primacy of these emotions by showing each to be the trigger of behavior with high survival value, such as the way fear inspires the fight-or-flight response.
I like this model and models or diagrams that help couples identify and understand emotions, intensified emotions and opposite emotions.
