Feelings, how many and what kinds

Started by Nikolas, Tue 28/03/2006 09:37:06

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Nikolas

Okay this is a rather bizzare subject, but I could really really use your help.

I can't explain many things right now, I have to keep quiet about the whole idea, but this is for my PhD, so any help would be greatly appreciated.

What I want:

I'm trying to figure if I can categorize all the feelings a human can have. Eg. Anger, Happiness, Sadness and so on... But I'm not sure if I'm forgetting something or I'm missing something out, or whatever.

I have figured that every emotion, or feeling must have its oposite, like happiness-sadness. And that I need the most basic ones. Jealousy is an emotion, yes but it would be something like anger, fear and sadness at the same time.

So how many emotions/feelings can you think of that are most basic and can't be broken into other catoegories? And do they have an oposite feeling/emotion?

Please if possible keep this thread clear of questions and stuff. Feel free to PM me for any questions or swearing or flamming you may have or wish to. :)

As far I have found 4

happy - sad
angry - calm

Any more?
As I said all help much appreciated.
And thank you!

Nikolas

Kinoko

I don't really understand, but that made me think - confused?

Mind you, that's not really an emotion I guess.

SSH

12

Vince Twelve

Leave it to SSH to answer a philosophical question of introspection with a wikipedia link...  :P

And Nik, I don't think calm would be the emotional opposite of angry.  Calm is kind of like the absence of emotions, yeah?  Perhaps angry <=> grateful or something along those lines.

Also, I'd say you can include Love <=> Hate.  Maybe Desire <-> Disgust...


DoorKnobHandle

Ugh, feelings don't work that way in my opinion. Really, you made me think about it, but I don't think that there is a way of describing emotions at all.

Nikolas

dkh: You mean musical describe or gneerally. Cause if you can generally I can shape it musically (hoping to anyway).

But generally I think that you can identify a music track like being happy (think of smurf music for example), or sad (think Presnier) or angry (think KoRn or whatever else) and so on...

Vince: Thanks mate. Calm is the absense of emotions? I didn't know that! hmmm... But thnak for the other ones, good ideas too. And SSH did help wit hthe wikipedia link (I never think of looking there, I've got to start using it more).

SSH: Thanks mate! Usefull link!

Kinoko: Confused? Not really an emotion, but bizarly enough I think it could work with what I want it to. So THANKS! Cause now I have to search for other stuff as well. It's not only emotions I'm looking for...

Well... Anyway more please, more...

The only thing is that I can't explain right now, what I will do with these, but it has to do with my PhD, and your ideas have been very useful so far! Thanks everybody.

DoorKnobHandle

#6
Quote from: Nikolas on Tue 28/03/2006 12:43:45
dkh: You mean musical describe or gneerally. Cause if you can generally I can shape it musically (hoping to anyway).

I DO believe that you can recreate a feeling musically (and you are definately able to do that very well, Nikolas), but I don't think that a counter-feeling to angry for example can be found. Is it happy? Glad? Nice?

To me it seems that feelings are unique for everybody and our words do not give us the possibility to describe them correctly for everybody. You CAN however - as said before - let other people know how sadness or anger feels for YOURSELF (for example you could express that musically or lyrical or whatever).

EDIT: Additionally, I think that there are infinite feelings, because do you really think that its the same sadness I feel after losing my girlfriend and after my mother died? No, those feelings aren't even comparable (although they might be wrongly categorized as "sad" both). In order to have a correct and complete lists of feelings or emotions, you'd need to seperate them like this: "sadness-after-losing-girlfriend", "sadness-because-close-person-died" etc. and of course there are infinite situations in ones life in which one can feel sad. Thus there are infinite emotions... ;)

Kinoko

If you want to be really serious about it, you have to take into account that many different languages have many different words for emotions others don't. There's a crapload in Japanese alone that there are no English equivalents for.

biothlebop

Yeah, like eskimoes having 30-something words for snow, but if you take it too far, it will become pretentious or hard to distinguish (like wine-experts who claim that this thing has a rich wooden aroma and a hint of licourice to it) and I believe it is a good idea to have only a few selected that can describe the rest, some that are universal or primal emotions.
If you go a little further from the caveman/ape emotions you could consider emotions (eg. pride, insecurity) that society wouldn't do without.
Hell is like Tetris, make sure that you fit.

SSH

English has words for the abstract and the specific. So while "sad" is correct for someone mourning and someone dumped it is hardly the whole story. But that doesn't make it wrong.
12

Nikolas

I need to clarify somethings!

I don't care about the different meanings of the word 'sad', or how mayb words for sadness can someone come up with.

I may needed to have said this earlier, but
what I'm looking for is the basic emotions that can be detected by someone else.

dkh, sadness is different of course when loosing a gilr or you mother, but for someone who does not know what's happening it's all sadness, at different levels of course.

Is happiniess any different than excitmenet? I know that it may have different meanings and different applicatios, but the output of an exiceted person and a happy person, can be quite the same.

So I'm trying to distinguish the basic ones, that are completly different. There is no way to describe sadness using other emotions, where you can easily descirbe drousy, blue, sorrowfull, pityful, with a couple of other emotions, including sad (at least that's what I think).

What I'm trying to do is to find a (medical probably) way for a person to give an output of his/her feelings at real-time. But before I can start discussing seriously with a doctor (I have actually started to discuss with a couple of doctors), I need to tell them what emotions I'm looking for, what is theuir job. I can't give them a catalouge of 500 emotions and tell them to distinguish between them. But I can give them 6-10 and tell them the differencies between them...

Okay, I haven't given out too much, at least this is how much I can give away without feeling uncomfortable...

biothlebop

I think the problem here is in defining the opposites. (Using your words) when you do the parallel happy - sad the word happy is narrowed down. You could as well say happy - angry which gives happy a new meaning. Many of these words are so abstract that they are interchangeable and can be understood differently by a person who says I am sad and the person who is listening. It cannot be done without overlapping words, and no matter how many words you use, a current state of emotion cannot be expressed perfectly. In a simplified  example, all emotions can be placed somewhere on a happy - sad scale (calm is in the middle, angry is towards sad), like political parties can be placed from left to right. The thing you should have immediately posted was the amount of words you were aiming for to describe a state (6-10), which makes it easier for us to help you. I'll try to think about it and maybe post a set later.
Hell is like Tetris, make sure that you fit.

Pesty

You know what I don't see anywhere?

Apathy.

That's what I'm feeling right now. Apathy.
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Helm

#13
Nik, you know in greek we say 'esthimata' for feelings, and 'sin-esthimata' for the higher type, a combination of esthimata. Lower type is usually anger or fear etc. very primal biochemical effects that we share with most mamals and generally most of the more evolved animals actually. Sinesthimata accur in relation with self-awareness or something. Think about it, I guess.

But.

I strongly urge you to not look at feelings in couples of dialectic oppositions. I suspect it doesn't work that way. This sort of dualism is antiquated and will not provide a good toolset for you to understand the world. But it might help with art because art isn't exactly about proper interpretation of the world. We feel a whole lot of things at any given time, and the coorelations are more three-dimensional and complex and everything influencing everything. We are not sims with ANGER - HAPPINESS negative to positive sliders.

That is to not to say it is difficult for a person to achieve an emotional state, if he were to have all the right resources at hand  - give me the woman I need, give me the comforts I need, give me the time I need, give me the context I need and I will be a most happy person... with the only lingering fear being the omnipresent threat of mortality, I guess. What people need is pretty simple, I find. How they come to need it, how it works internally, how desire and ambition and self-esteem and irrational fears, and existential awareness and all that relates to create the psychological makeup of a given modern human being, is very, very difficult to model.

I don't think you'll gain anything as a person from trying to codify emotion, besides arbiterate resolutions that you can use as party tricks and a friendly, certain, but also sheltered and wrong point of view of humans where you look at them and you go 'oh, he fits into my model in this and that way' where there's no risk-taking and you don't actually experience other people at all, just your preconception of them.
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Ishmael

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Nikolas

Ishmael and Pesty: Thanks guys! Ishmael, I have no idea what you're talkig about, and Pesty, I don't know what you tried to say but even without trying you helped  :D

Helm: If I"m not mistaken in greek esthima is what we get with our esthiseis. What we get from hearing, seeing and so on. Everything else is sin-esthimata. But I dunno I will give thought to what you said. I do have my reasons for trying to codify emotions, I'm not pretty sure that I will do a good job, I'll try to though and of course I won't judge anybody for anything. I will just use the results from this coding. But really thanks. You did made me think. About lower type feelings? What are they? Which are they? What are these basic types of emotions. Because I could, for instance, 'explain' a higher type of emotion with a combinatin of some lower ones. Pressumably speaking...

Bio and Helm: I think that you are right and maybe there is a problem in trying to couple possitive and negative feelings. There may be not possitive and negative feelings or emotions but simply emotions or feelings.

bio: You're right, I should be clearer fro mthe begining. But I'm not exactly sure of the number and well 6-10 is just a number, I don't mind if they come up 12, but I do mind with 500, where I've seen something. But thanks, do repost.

Radiant

I recall from my psychology classes that there were five (or maybe that was six?) basic facial expressions that were recognizably near-identical in (nearly) every human society, and that corresponded to five basic emotions. IIRC the list goes happiness, fear, anger, surprise, and sadness. HTH.

MashPotato

Quote from: Radiant on Tue 28/03/2006 19:35:14
I recall from my psychology classes that there were five (or maybe that was six?) basic facial expressions that were recognizably near-identical in (nearly) every human society, and that corresponded to five basic emotions. IIRC the list goes happiness, fear, anger, surprise, and sadness. HTH.
I believe disgust is one of the universal facial  expressions as well (I'm majoring in psych, so I SHOULD know, but this really isn't my area ^_^)

There's been a lot of work done in psychology pertaining to making a catalogue of emotions.  Although I'm pretty sure there's no definitive answer, you might want to take a look at the literature in this area for ideas.  You can also check out the basic emotional expressions thing mentioned above.
Good luck! ^_^

Snarky

I don't really know if I want to assist you with yet another "I have this idea and I need your help but I can't tell you what it is" projects. Just like it's insulting to put a big "I made this picture" logo on something you post in the critics' lounge, it's kind of disrespectful to ask us to help you without telling us what it is for.

That said, I think your approach is extremely ill-founded. You are confusing the concept of emotions as a subjective internal state (I feel sad, etc.), with expressions that can be interpreted by  others. This kind of behavioralism has been discredited for decades. You are conflating the idea of basic emotions vs. complex emotions (itself a distinction open to criticism) with the idea of consistent or reliably interpreted expressions (there's no reason to assume that the expressions that are most unambiguous represent the most basic emotions). Also, like Helm says, you're assuming a very dubious dualism of emotions without any basis at all (except presumably some misguided ideal of symmetry). You have omitted all physical sensations and feelings (pain, exhaustion, excitement, arousal, etc.), but the line between an emotion (or an expression signalling an emotion) and a physical feeling (or an expression signalling a physical state) is often blurred.

Paul Ekman did research on expressions that are interpreted as the same emotion across all cultures. That sounds like about the most useful place for you to start. In his book Blink, Malcolm Gladwell describes an experiment that analysed the health of relationships by looking at the emotions partners expressed to each other from second to second (apparently, the number of times they express disgust with each other is the main predictor of breakups). You might find that to be an interesting introduction to these questions.

Nikolas

Quote from: Snarky on Tue 28/03/2006 23:22:02
I don't really know if I want to assist you with yet another "I have this idea and I need your help but I can't tell you what it is" projects. Just like it's insulting to put a big "I made this picture" logo on something you post in the critics' lounge, it's kind of disrespectful to ask us to help you without telling us what it is for.

I did say that it is for my PhD, but I can't really explain in detail what I want to do, the whole idea behind things. I don't think it's that bad...

Now on what you said I have to find something subjective to stand on, otherwise everything will simply collapse! And physical sensetaion is something I have in mind, that could blur things a little.

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