Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society

The Nature of Emotions: Human emotions have deep evolutionary roots, a fact that may
explain their complexity and provide tools for clinical practice
Author(s): Robert Plutchik
Source: American Scientist, Vol. 89, No. 4 (JULY-AUGUST 2001), pp. 344-350
Published by: Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society
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The Nature of Emotions

Human emotionshave deep evolutionaryroots,afact thatmay explain

theircomplexityand provide toolsfor clinicalpractice

Robert Plutchik

everyone agrees that the behaviorist would hold that emotion is inmood states, just as an adequate theo
Almost study of emotion is one of themost an inner state and thus
simply outside ry of depression cannot be constructed
confused (and stillopen) chapters in the the realm of science. For theirpart, psy simply from a knowledge of the avail
history of psychology. By one estimate, choanalysts have made us aware that ability of serotonin.As theUniversity of
more than 90 definitions of "emotion" emotions may be repressed, inhibited or Iowa neuroscientist Antonio Damasio
were proposed over the course of the unconscious, and thus unavailable to in has pointed out, when the amassing of
20th century. If there is little consensus trospection.Finally, language itselfintro data does not resolve a complex issue, it
on themeaning of the term, it isno won duces ambiguity and does not make it may be necessary to find new ways to
der that there ismuch disagreement easy to describe mixed emotions in an conceptualize theproblem.
among contemporary theoreticians con
unequivocal way. The meaning of emo Inmy view evolutionary theorypro
cerning the best way to conceptualize tion terms is often obscure. For example, vides a way to unify a number of theo
emotion and interpretits role in life. many people are not sure about the dif retical perspectives. Using the tools and
In everyday human existencewe con ferences between fear and anxiety, guilt methods of evolutionary biology, and
ceive of an emotion?anger, despair, joy, and shame, or envy and jealousy.As a
pulling together information fromother
grief?as a feeling,an inner state.The in result,we often resort tometaphor to at species, we can put emotions in a func
ternal experience of emotion is highly tempt to describe emotion. Think, for ex tional framework?define them in terms
personal and often confusing,particular ample, of such expressions as of what theiradaptive functionmight be,
"blowing
lybecause several emotions may be ex off steam,"
"hating
someone's
guts,"
and thus understand better theirbiologi
perienced at the same time. Imagine, "pain in theneck," "lump in the throat" cal basis and the apparent connections
then,how difficult the objective study of and "a broken heart." between them.
emotionmust be.Most of us often censor How, then, can emotion be studied Some work along these lineshas been
our own thoughts and feelings, and we and understood? The challenge of devel widely popularized in recent years: By
have learned to be cautious about ac oping a theoretical approach is impor now we've all heard authors of best-sell
cepting other people's comments about tant, because emotions are an essential
ing books describe jealousy, love, anxi
their feelings. The empirical study of a part of who we are and how we survive; ety and fear in dogs, cats, chimpanzees,
psychological phenomenon so complex emotional distress impels people to seek baboons, elephants and lions. The bes
and so elaborately cloaked cannot help help, and indeed theprimary concern of tiaries of themedieval period contained
but present a special challenge. psychotherapy is the repair of emotional detailed descriptions of emotions in ani
Compounding the distrust of verbal disorders. To simply declare emotion mals. The popular appeal of such expla
reports of emotion are the influences of outside the bounds of scientific study nations may lie in theirability to touch a
behaviorism and psychoanalysis on psy would be irresponsible. deep-seated sense of the connectedness
chological research. The behaviorists of I believe that a scientific and of all living things.Although many psy
therapeu
the 20th century believed that the only tically useful understanding of emotions chologists have warned of the dangers
truly reliable, objective information ob is possible. fact, there are several sci of anthropomorphism, recent thinking
tainable from living creatureswas infor entific intellectual traditions that have by cognitive scientists and others sees
mation about theirbehavior. A classical dealt with this issue. There are an evolu this attitude as an outdated prejudice.
tionary (launched by Charles Darwin), a The Rockefeller University zoologist
psychophysiological (William James), a Donald Griffin, one of the rounders of
neurological (WalterCannon) and a psy the field of animal cognition, believes
Robert Plutchik is professor emeritus at theAlbert
Einstein College ofMedicine and adjunct professor tradition that the "charge of anthropomorphism
chodynamic (Sigmund Freud),
at theUniversity
of South Florida. He received his in addition to the cognitive perspective is a conceited claim that only our
Ph.D. from Columbia University. He has authored
thatbegan emerging in the 1950s.More species is capable of even the simplest
or coauthored more than 260 articles, 45
chapters evidence has be conscious tr But there is dan
and eight books and has edited seven books. His recentlyneurobiological nking."
gun to inform the discussion; however, ger in oversimplifying: A sophisticated
research interests include the study of emotions,
the study of suicide and violence and the study of identifyingthe structuresof thebrain re understanding isneeded to informclin
thepsychotherapy process. Address for Plutchik: lated to emotion isnot a theory of emo ical
practice.
4505 Deer Creek Boulevard, Sarasota, FL 34238. tion, nor can such a theorybe built from Over the past four decades I have
a knowledge of the chemicals involved
Internet: proban@home.com
pulled together evidence from various

344 American Scientist, Volume 89

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 Carl Sams II/PeterArnold, Inc.

Figure 1. Great
egrets in breeding plumage fight inmidair, displaying the agonistic behavior that is the precursor of human emotions such as fear,

anger and jealousy. Human emotions, says the author, are best viewed through an evolutionary lens, as adaptations triggered by the challenges of
survival and reproduction that are part of every organism's existence. An evolutionary approach, he argues, can sort out the roles of emotion, impulse
and action and, in a therapeutic setting, help people understand the circumstances inwhich emotions can sometimes fail in their adaptive tasks.

studies to form a psychoevolutionary
theoryof emotion, with thegoals of clar
ifyingwhat emotions are, findingways
tomeasure them, relating emotions to
other psychological disciplines, and in
forming the practice of psychotherapy.
Like many concepts in science, emotions
can be best understood bymaking infer
ences from certain classes of evidence.
Such inferences suggest thatemotions or
their evolutionary precursors (or proto
types) can be found among lower ani
mals as well as human beings, a fact that
can provide fascinating evolutionary in
sights into our emotions, moods and
personality traits.They suggest further
thatemotion, cognition and action inter
act in feedback loops and that emotion
can be viewed in a structuralmodel tied
to
adaptation.
Evolution and Emotion animal who senses a predator or a threat
What we call cognition?the activity of to itsoffspring,a sirrdlaritythathas been
knowing, learning and thinking, of found inneurochemical, anatomical and
which emotion is a part?evolved over imaging studies that show these states
millions of years. Charles Darwin recog are mediated by the limbic system, the
nized that the process of evolution by part of the central nervous system com
natural selection applied not only to mon to lower and higher animals. Love
anatomic structures but also to an ani and emotional attachment clearly pro
mal's "mind" and expressive behav mote pair bonding, reproduction and
ior?a conclusion that led him towrite a parental investment, basic to evolution
book on emotional expression. Those ary fitness inhuman beings. But the ori
who have followed Darwin in studying gins of some other emotions are harder
the evolutionary origins of emotion to find. Is there a general principle that
have sought to understand how emo can be applied?
tions increase evolutionary fitness for The place to startmight be with thede
the individual. finitionproblem. An emotion isnot sim
As mentioned above, a few evolu ply a feeling state. Emotion is a complex
tionary origins are easy to postulate. chain of loosely connected events thatbe
Fear and anxiety inpeople closely paral gins with a stimulus and includes feel
lel the state of heightened arousal of an ings,psychological changes, impulses to

2001 July-August 345

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a paramecium, mixed algae, diatoms and other plankton?take
Figure 2.Microorganisms?here
in food, excrete waste products, avoid predators, reproduce, seek safe environments and explore
their world. They must distinguish between predator and prey and, if their mode of reproduc
tion requires it, between a potential mate and a potential enemy. This information-gathering
found in all organisms
and prediction and other universal adaptations constitute prototype
from which human emotion can be modeled.
adaptations
action and specific, goal-directed behav haviors communicate information from
ior.That is to say, feelings do not happen one animal to another about what is
in isolation. They are responses to sig likely tohappen; thereforetheyaffectthe
nificant situations in an individual's life, chances of survival of the individual
and often theymotivate actions. This de demonstrating the behavior. "Even in
finition of emotions allows the concept sects," he wrote in his 1872 book, "ex
tobe generalized to lower animals with press anger, terror,jealousy, and love by
out difficulty. From his studies of ani their stridulations."
a products. Itmust distinguish between
mals, human infantsand human adults, Extending Darwin's idea bit, I pro
are acti
Darwin concluded that expressive be pose that in general, emotions
vated in an individual when issues of
survival are raised in factor by implica
tion. Such situations include threats, at
tacks, poisonous substances or the
sighting of a potential mate. The effect
of the emotional state is to create an in
teraction between the individual and
the event or stimulus that precipitated
the emotion. The interaction usually
takes the form of an attempt to reduce
the disequilibrium and reestablish a
state of comparative rest.
Protozoologist Nicola Ricci of the
University of Pisa in Italy pointed out
in 1990 that every single-celled organ
ism, from theblue-green alga to the eu
karyote, is a complete, self-sufficient
or
Figure 3. Suckling her young, a suricate
ganism. Single-celled organisms are
meerkat mother keeps an eye on her sur
exposed to daily risks in their environ
roundings in a South African nature preserve, ments. They take in food, excretewaste
ready to protect her offspring from any threat
functions
products, avoid predators, reproduce
believe
Psychologists cognitive
by exchange of genes inmany cases,
evolved to serve emotional and biological
seek safe environments and explore
needs?in evolutionary terms, in order to pre
theirmicrobiological world. Thus these
dict the future more effectively. In survival sit
uations and inner states such as simple organisms adapt tomany of the
cognitions
arousal tend to be followed by impulses to ac same problems as higher,multicellular
tion?perhaps, in this case, a defensive or pro organisms. Bacteria
are capable of very
tective posture, attack or flight complex metabolic pathways, and, as
346 American Scientist, Volume 89
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Ursula Goodenough detailed in these
pages in 1991, viruses and bacteria
have evolved tactics of camouflage, dis
traction and mimicry. Even plant cells
such as green algae show defensive re
actions to touch, and chemical mes
sages signal everything from alarm to
sexual attraction in organisms from
bacteria to human beings.
As one moves up the evolutionary
ladder, it is remarkable to note that a
small number of developmental genes
can radically alter the behavior of cells
and change an amoeba into a multi
celled organism. Developmental biolo
gistWilliam Loomis of theUniversity of
California, San Diego, estimated in 1988
that "the important evolutionary differ
ences between a guppy and a primate
a few hundred
probably lie in only
genes." Along with the genetic continu
um, and evolutionary continuities in
structure, function and development,
then, it isnot surprising thatone can dis
cern a behavioral continuum.
Writing in 1980, the late zoologist
JohnPaul Scott of Bowling Green State
na
University pointed out that it is the
ture of the environment that creates cer
tain functional requirements for all or
ganisms if they are to survive. Like
Riori's alga, a higher organism must take
in nourishment and eliminate waste
a
predator and prey and between poten
tialmate and a potential enemy. Itmust
explore its environment and orient its
sense organs appropriately as it takes in
information about the beneficial and
harmful aspects of its immediate world.
Organisms that are relatively helpless at
birthmust have ways ofmc?cating the
need forcare and nurturance.
Only a few classes of adaptive behav
ior, Scott noted, are found in most
species and atmost phylogenetic levels.
These include eating, the fight-or-flight
response, sex, caregiving and investiga
tion. These patterns might be consid
ered prototype adaptations. The con
nections between behavior and inner
states and processes are less obvious.
Yet such connections can be made by in
ference from a variety of evidence. This
evidence includes knowledge of stimu
lating conditions, the effects of behav
ioral acts, knowledge of typical behav
ior patterns of the individual and
species, choices made when alternatives
exist and reactions of othermembers of
one's group or species. A single overt
display of emotions can reflectcomplex
states such as approach and avoidance,
 attack and flight, sex and aggression, or environments enables organisms to into answering the "what comes first?"
fear and pleasure. It is not necessarily prepare for those environments. question, ever since theAmerican psy
to detect an emotional substrate in
easy Psychologist Ulric Neisser of Cornell chologist-philosopher William James in
the behavior of lower animals, but nei University compared human beings 1884 framed the question thisway: Is it
ther is itnecessary to exclude thepossi with computing machines in a seminal the feeling of emotion or thephysiolog
bility. Emotion is more
far complex than article in 1963.He suggested that cogni ical changes that are part of emotion?
the subjective experience familiar to a tive functions serve emotions and bio This is actually a pseudoproblem.
human adult, and the concept of emo logical needs. Information from the en Emotions are not simply linear events,
tion can be applied to lower animals as vironment, he says, is evaluated in terms but rather are feedback processes. The
well as human beings. Emotions have of itsability to satisfyor frustrateneeds. function of emotion is to restore the in
an inherent that is inpart re What is particularly significant is that dividual to a state of equilibrium when
complexity
lated to their evolutionary history. each new cognitive experience that isbi unexpected or unusual events create
ologically important is connected with disequilibrium. Even if cognitions are
Emotion and Evolution an emotional reaction such as fear,
Cognition, plea generally at the beginning of the chain
Any organism must determine, on the sure, pain, disgust or depression. From of events, they can be influenced by
basis of limited information, whether thepoint of view of evolution, cognition events appearing later in the chain?
there is food, amate or danger in itsen developed in order topredict the future states of arousal, say, or ego defenses?
vironment. Depending on the predic more effectively. The human brain, through a feedback process. Stimulus
tionmade, the organism makes a deci which has evolved as an adaptation to events, either external or internal (as in
sion to escape, to attack, to eat or to changing and difficult environments, dreams), act as primary triggers that
mate. The complex processes thatgo on has now helped create thevery environ start the emotion process going.
in the service of biological need include ment towhich itmust continue to adapt. The biological aspects of thisprocess
receiving sensory input, evaluating it, Ifemotion is a chain of events, cogni have been the subject of considerable
capturing the important aspects of the tion is generally near the beginning of recent study. Animal research by
information in symbols and comparing the chain. This is considered an impor Joseph E. LeDoux ofNew York Univer
the new information with memory tantpoint in the psychological commu sity has revealed that the conditioned
stores. Predicting the characteristics of nity,which has put a good deal of effort fear response involves several neural

feeling
stimulus inferred state
J impulses overtbehavior
-^i _jf effect
event cognition toaction *1 (displays)
1
physiological
arousal

? ? ?
T^P Figure 4. Feedback loops in emotion show how sensory information is evaluated and translated into action or some other outcome that nor
malizes the relationship between the individual and the triggering event. The inner state perceived as fear may arise from a threat that is per
ceived as "danger"; the fear triggers an impulse to flee, which results eventually in reduction of the threat. A similar set of homeostatic
processes can be seen in the case of sadness in a child experiencing loss of her mother.

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Stimulus
event cognition
Figure 5. Although emotional substrates
human animals, many stimuli are experienced
totypical behavior followed by, generally,
might not have been achieved without the impulse precipitated
it is common to use
experience
emotion is considerably more complex.
pathways with different latencies.
Damasio has traced the events in an ini
tial defensive response (fear): The key
features of a dangerous animal or
event?perhaps color, speed of move
ment, certain sounds?are detected
signaled to the amygdala, a part of the
limbic system deep in the brain. This
process is very rapid and is not a con
scious one. Signals from the amygdala
to premontai areas and other locations
precipitate the conscious feelings asso
ciated with an emotion.
Feeling states tend to be followed by
impulses to action. Emotion can cause
one's muscles to tense; it can be ex
pressed as a facial gesture, clenched fist
or an action such as running, attacking or
yelling. Impulses to action are not always
followed by action, as clinicians know?
often for fearof retaliation or embarrass
ment. Even when they are, overt behav
ior isnot the end of the emotion process.
Such behavior generally has an effect
on the stimulus or condition that started
the chain of events in the firstplace. For
example, running from a source of
threat reduces the threat and tends to
reestablish the condition thatexisted be
fore the threat.Similarly, ifsomeone los
es a parent, crying and grieving tend to
elicit supportive and helpful contacts
frommembers of the grieving person's
348 American Scientist, Volume
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overt
"selfish" and concerned with self-main
feeling
state behavior tenance and Social in
self-reproduction.
teractions and communications reflect
this conflict.Listening and speaking are
regulated by direct and subtle expres
sions of emotion?smiles, eye contact or
looking away, nods, postural shifts,vo
calizations, passive questions and im
plicit commands ("Why don't you wear
a hearing aid?").
Much social interaction involves in
dividuals in different hierarchical po
sitions. In such situations, during con
versation there is often a censoring of
rebellious thoughts, and a covert compe
tition of ideas. An individual may expe
rience feelings of defiance ormay accept
a submissive position. Emotions, at both
conscious and unconscious levels, regu
late such social processes.
Another way to conceptualize emo
tions as a social-regulation process is in
terms of the views of animal communi
cation proposed by Eugene Morton of
cannot always be discerned in the behavior of non
the Smithsonian Institution and his col
by people and animals alike and result in pro
the reestablishment of an equilibrium state that leagues. They point out that communi
cation is an
by the inner state. In human assessment/management
the term "emotion" to describe the feeling state, but in fact process aimed at survival. Communica
tion signals are selected in evolution be
cause they substitute formore riskybe
social group and, at least in a symbolic havior such as fighting.
way, provide a sort of reattachmentwith California ground squirrels stimulate
the lost parent and thus a change in the a rattlesnake to rattleby kicking earth at
feeling state. it.This is done because squirrels use the
Overall, emotion is a kind of homeo sound of rattling to assess the snake's
and static process inwhich behavior medi size and body temperature, two factors
ates progress toward equilibrium; I call that determine how dangerous the
it a behavioral homeostatic, negative snake is to their pups. With many ani
feedback system. Emotion is a chain of mals, distress calls are adaptive because
events made up of feedback loops. Feel theymay startle a predator into letting
ings and behavior can affect cognition, go, may attract the attention of other
as
just cognition can influence feeling. conspecifics tomob thepredator, ormay
At theheart of all these descriptions is attract a largerpredator to compete and
the idea thatemotions have a function in possibly allow escape. However, it isnot
the lives of individuals. This idea arises always easy to determine the adaptive
froman evolutionary perspective, is con nature of a given signal.
sistentwith psychodynamic thinkingand Emotions are part of themanagement
isbecoming increasinglyaccepted in con of the process. Anger, for example, in
temporarywritings. For example, young timidates, influences others to do some
an
organisms require food, protection and thingyou wish them todo, energizes
transportation.Crying is amajor method individual for attack or defense and
for getting such care. Fear protects the spaces theparticipants in a conflict.
self, initiateswithdrawal and allows gen
eral functioning to continue. Shame leads Modeling the Emotions
to remorse and a decrease in the proba I have used the term "emotion" as a sin
bility of repetitionof the shameful act. gle, general term fora group of phenom
ena. As complex processes with func
These examples imply that emotions
are part of a social regulation process. tional value both in communication and
Evolutionary theory reminds us that the in increasing the individual's chances of
interestsof different individuals are of survival, emotions represent proximate
ten in conflict: males versus females, methods to achieve evolutionary fitness.
parents versus children, brothers versus To integratemany of the things known
brothers, group versus group. Genes are about emotions,model-making isuseful.
89
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 English there are a few hundred
emotion words, and they tend to fall into
familiesbased on similarity.Ihave found
that the primary emotions can be con
ceptualized in a fashion analogous to a
color wheel?placing similar emotions
close together and opposites 180 degrees
apart, like complementary colors. Other
emotions are mixtures of the primary
emotions, just as some colors are prima
ry and others made by mixing the pri
mary colors. Such "circumplex" model
ing can be used as an analytical tool in
understanding personality as well, and
the similaritybetween the twomodels is
important. I have extended the circum
plex model into a thirddimension, rep
resenting the intensity of emotions, so
that the total so-called structuralmodel
of emotions is shaped like a cone.
The notion of a ckcumplex model is
not my invention, nor is itnew. Social
psychologist William McDougall noted
theparallel between emotions and colors
in 1921,writing that"the color sensations
present, like theemotions, an^definitely
great variety of qualities shading intoone
another by imperceptible gradients...."
The firstdrcumplex model was one de
veloped by Brown University psycholo
gist Harold Schlosberg in 1941, afterhe
had asked research participants to judge
the emotions posed in a standard set of Figure 6. 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 rep
pictures of facial expression. Schlosberg resents intensity, and the circle represents degrees of similarity among the emotions. The eight
added the intensity dimension to his
sectors are designed to indicate that there are eight primary emotion dimensions defined by the
model. My own model was proposed in
theory arranged as four pairs of opposites. In the exploded model the emotions in the blank
1958,when I suggested eight basic bipo spaces are the primary dyads?emotions that are mixtures of two of the primary emotions.
lar emotions: versus sonozv, ver
joy anger
susfear, acceptanceversus disgust and sur
priseversus expectancy.
Over the centuries, fromDescartes to
thepresent, philosophers and psycholo
gists have proposed anywhere from3 to
11 emotions as primary or basic. All the
most
lists include/eflr,anger and sadness-,
include joy, loveand surpnse. There isno
unequivocal way to settle on a precise
number, although factor-analytic stud
ies, sirn?arity-scaling studies, child-de
velopment studies and cross-cultural
studies are useful. But in the final analy
sis, this is a theoretical decision to be

Figure 7. To help psychologists understand

the relations among emotions, raters were
asked to estimate the degree of similarity be
tween certain pairs of emotions. The use of a

similarity scaling method produced the em

pirical angular locations shown in the figure

(where opposites have a similarity ranking of
-1.0 and identical concepts have a similarity
se
ranking of 1.0). The concepts shown are a
lection from a larger population of words.

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expressions of
guided the development of tests for
such basic emotions as sadness, joy and measuring moods, personality traits,
disgust. Thus personality traitsmay be ego defenses and coping styles. It has Links to Bitemet resources for

conceptualized as being derived from also proposed a connection between "The Nature of Emotions" are available on
mixtures of emotions.With my colleague emotions and the existential crises that the American Scientist Web site;

Hope Conte, I have been able to find a all human beings are subject to?those
http: / /www.aniericansc|eiitislorg /
circumplex
structure for certain classes
involving hierarchy, territoriality,identi articles/Olarticles /plutchik.html
of personality traits. tyand temporality.

350 American Scientist, Volume 89

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