Emotion wheels, or feelings wheels, are visual representations of the range of human emotions. As its name implies, emotions are ordered in a radial manner and, depending on the version of the wheel, these emotions can be ordered, sorted and related under different criteria.
The goal of an emotion wheel (as of any visual representation) is to augment the cognition or understanding of an individual of its own emotions, by allowing exploration, identification and classification of emotions.
This series of posts aim to tell the story of the research and development behind “Parrot Emotions” an emotion wheel app I created with the intent of give people an interactive tool to better identify and classify their emotions, as well as improving their emotional intelligence.
First Emotion Wheel - Psychoevolutionary theory
The first emotion wheel is usually attributed to Robert Plutchik, who postulated his psychoevolutionary theory of emotions in 1980.
Plutchik proposes that the existence of emotions in animals is a consequence of evolution, theorizing that they result in an improved survival rate and reproductive success in an organism. With this, every emotion has a trigger and a response in an individual. For example, fear as the result of a potential threat and the subsequent escape from it.
The author identifies eight primary bipolar emotions, in four opposite pairs:
- anger - fear
- disgust - trust
- joy - sadness
- anticipation - surprise
Plutchik’s emotion wheel is based on his psychoevolutionary theory. In this wheel, the eight emotions are organized in a way in which every pair of emotions is opposed to itself on the wheel. Furthermore, Plutchik uses color theory to represent this opposition, with the use of complementary colors.
This representation contains instances with different levels of intensity of the eight primary emotions, with this intensity determined by the distance from the center of the wheel: the farther away from the center, the less intense the emotion. This intensity is also represented by the intensity (saturation) of its color and, as colors do, the combination of emotions gives another emotion as a result.
In favor of Plutchik, his model is pioneer in the field of visual representation of emotions, it is easy to use thanks to its reduced selection of emotions and use of color theory, allowing you to identify emotions (with their intensity), and opening the gates to the exploration of emotions as a result of combination.
It’s worth pointing out though, that there are some weaknesses in this representation. The most obvious one being the over-simplification of human emotions, given that it lacks a proper range of specific emotions, limiting itself to the eight primary emotions and their intensities.
Furthermore, if the goal is to identify emotions and develop emotional intelligence, is worthy to ask about the relevance of the psychoevolutionary theory, in which this model is strongly based.
Lastly, we must keep in mind that this model is over 40 years old, a time when there were developments in the field of emotions and psychology.
Strengths:
- Easy to navigate, reduced group of emotions and use of colors
- Allows you to identify intensity in emotions
Weaknesses:
- Over-simplification of emotions
- Relevance of psychoevolutionary theory for use case
- Lack of recent developments
Willcox’s Emotion Wheel
The next iteration of the emotion wheel can be attributed to Gloria Willcox, who in 1982 published an article in which she wrote about her motivation and thought process when creating her model, taking the work of Robert Plutchik as one of her inspirations.
In her work as a psychotherapist, Willcox often found their patients disoriented when trying to describe their feelings. She postulated that this lack of emotional language was a result of the external repression of “negative” emotions, especially at a young age at the family core. Her creation turned out truly useful during her therapy sessions with her patients, giving them a useful tool that allowed them to identify and verbalize their emotions.
In the same way as Plutchik, Willcox uses colors to represent emotions, with more intense colors at the center, as well as a small group of six “base” emotions:
- mad
- scared
- sad
- powerful
- joyful
- peaceful
In this version, emotions at the extremes of the wheel are more specific variations derived from the base emotions at the center, establishing an emotion classification. Willcox, unlike Plutchik, does not establish an “opposed to” classification of emotions.
Among the strengths of this model is the ease of navigation, thanks to the emotions grouping and use of color theory, by associating entire groups of emotions to a specific color, like peaceful to the color blue. The use of emotion groups allows the user to identify specific emotions, navigating from the center of the wheel outwards, as well as classify and give more context to already identified emotions, by going from the extremes to the center. This wheel also admits personalization from the user, thanks to the use of white spaces, allowing further completion of the model.
Willcox explained in her article that she intended the wheel to be balanced in the number of emotions between “positive” and “negative”, but this could lead to a bias in the model. Lastly, and similarly to Plutchik’s wheel, this representation was conceived four decades ago, lacking recent research.
Strengths:
- Easy to navigate, reduced group of emotions and use of colors
- Allows you to classify emotions
- Two ways to use it:
- Classification of specific emotions
- Identification of emotions
Weaknesses:
- Potential bias as a result of symmetry between “positive” and “negative” emotions
- Lacks recent research
Modern Emotion Wheels
Currently, there are multiple versions of this tool, most of them based on Willcox’s model. Among the most popular versions, we could find for example the Junto Emotion Wheel, created by the Junto Institute. This wheel is quite similar to Willcox’s, with a group of base and derived emotions somewhat different.
Is worth mentioning that though this tool has the same goal of emotion identification, its main use case described by the Junto Institute is to be used in work group meetings, not in a therapy context as the previous to versions mentioned above.
There are more emotions wheels, created for specific use cases. For example, there are models aimed at working with children, in which there are illustrations to aid kids in identifying their emotions.
Regardless of the specific version, the goal of all emotion wheels is the same: to help individuals identify, understand, and articulate their emotional states. By providing a visual representation of the wide range of human emotions, these tools can facilitate self-awareness, emotional literacy, and emotional intelligence.
References
Plutchik, R. (1982). A psychoevolutionary theory of emotions. Social Science Information, 21(4-5), 529–553. doi:10.1177/053901882021004003
Willcox, G. (1982). The Feeling Wheel. Transactional Analysis Journal, 12(4), 274–276. doi:10.1177/036215378201200411
Junto Institute, (2024). Emotion Wheel - The Junto Institute. www.thejuntoinstitute.com/emotion-wheels/