People are dealing with a variety of emotions all the time, but while scientists used to believe there were only six real emotions - happiness, sadness, anger, surprise, fear and disgust – a new study has discovered that folks actually feel as much as 27 distinct emotions.
A study out of University of California, Berkeley involved more than 800 participants who were asked to rank their emotions after watching 30 short video clips, featuring scenes like births, babies, weddings, proposals, death, suffering, risky stunts, sexual acts, and more. In the end, the data pointed to 27 distinct emotions. They include:
- Admiration
- Adoration
- Aesthetic Appreciation
- Amusement
- Anxiety
- Awe
- Awkwardness
- Boredom
- Calmness
- Confusion
- Craving
- Disgust
- Empathetic pain
- Entrancement
- Envy
- Excitement
- Fear
- Horror
- Interest
- Joy
- Nostalgia
- Romance
- Sadness
- Satisfaction
- Sexual desire
- Sympathy
- Triumph
And if you can see a bit of an overlap with these emotions that’s because there are. The researchers note there are “smooth gradients of emotion” between some of them, adding that, "everything is interconnected.”