Scientists redefine how emotions should be categorized

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Scientists have found that humans experience 27 distinct categories of emotion, thereby challenging the long-held assumption in psychology that humans have just six main categories, namely happiness sadness, anger, fear, disgust and surprise.

The team, from University of California, Berkeley, also created a multidimensional, interactive map that showed how each of the emotional states are connected rather than existing as “islands.”

“We don’t get finite clusters of emotions in the map because everything is interconnected. Emotional experiences are so much richer and more nuanced than previously thought,” explains lead author Alan Cowen.