How the feelings are grouped

Feltmap sorts 62 feelings under 8 emotions. It's a way to help you notice and name what you feel, not a diagnosis or a clinical test. The groups draw on a few well-known ideas from emotion research, adapted for this site.

The eight emotions

• JoyDelight, contentment, gratitude, hope, amusement, relief, enthusiasm, serenity, satisfaction, pride
• LoveAffection, trust, care, belonging, tenderness, compassion, admiration, desire, longing
• FearUnease, nervousness, worry, insecurity, anxiety, dread, panic, horror
• SadnessMelancholy, disappointment, homesickness, nostalgia, regret, loneliness, hurt, helplessness, grief, despair
• AngerIrritation, frustration, resentment, indignation, envy, bitterness, jealousy, rage
• SurpriseCuriosity, confusion, wonder, amazement, shock, awe
• DisgustDistaste, disapproval, aversion, contempt, revulsion, loathing
• ShameEmbarrassment, guilt, inadequacy, remorse, humiliation

Where the groups come from

• Joy, love, fear, sadness, anger and surprise follow a study that asked people to sort more than a hundred emotion words by similarity. These six families came out on top (Shaver and colleagues, 1987). Parrott later set them out as a tree of primary, secondary and tertiary emotions.
• Disgust is added from the "basic emotions" tradition, which treats it as one of a handful of emotions recognised across cultures (Ekman, 1992).
• Shame is added from research on self-conscious emotions: feelings about ourselves, like guilt and embarrassment (Tangney and Dearing, 2002).
• Some feelings belong to more than one emotion. Hope sits in joy, love and fear, and jealousy in love, fear, sadness and anger. In your constellation they appear as split bubbles.
• The explanations under each feeling, and the starting positions of the sliders, were written for Feltmap. They are a starting point, not a definition.

References

1. Shaver, P., Schwartz, J., Kirson, D., & O’Connor, C. (1987). Emotion knowledge: Further exploration of a prototype approach. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52(6), 1061–1086.
2. Parrott, W. G. (Ed.). (2001). Emotions in Social Psychology: Key Readings. Psychology Press.
3. Ekman, P. (1992). An argument for basic emotions. Cognition and Emotion, 6(3–4), 169–200.
4. Tangney, J. P., & Dearing, R. L. (2002). Shame and Guilt. Guilford Press.
5. Willcox, G. (1982). The Feeling Wheel: A tool for expanding awareness of emotions and increasing spontaneity and intimacy. Transactional Analysis Journal, 12(4), 274–276. A similar, popular tool for naming feelings.