Plutchik's Wheel of Emotions

Robert Plutchik · 1980

Robert Plutchik's eight primary emotions, arranged as four opposing pairs, for tagging emotional content in text.

Plutchik's wheel organizes affect into eight primary emotions in four opposing pairs: joy ↔ sadness, trust ↔ disgust, fear ↔ anger, and surprise ↔ anticipation. Each emotion varies in intensity and can blend with its neighbours to form dyads (e.g. joy + trust = love).

This taxonomy is a popular, granular scheme for emotion/sentiment annotation. Tag spans where the subject expresses an emotion in their own words and assign the primary emotion (optionally with an intensity). Emotion words that appear only in the interviewer's question are not coded.

Domains (8)

JoyJOY

Pleasure, happiness, or delight expressed by the speaker.

Curated skill
TrustTRU

Confidence in, or reliance on, another person or thing.

Curated skill
FearFEA

Anxiety, dread, or apprehension about a threat.

Curated skill
SurpriseSUR

A reaction to something unexpected.

Curated skill
SadnessSAD

Sorrow, grief, or unhappiness expressed by the speaker.

Curated skill
DisgustDIS

Revulsion or strong disapproval toward something.

Curated skill
AngerANG

Hostility, irritation, or rage expressed by the speaker.

Curated skill
AnticipationANT

Looking forward to or expecting a future event.

Curated skill
Plutchik R. A general psychoevolutionary theory of emotion. In: Emotion: Theory, Research, and Experience, Vol. 1. Academic Press; 1980. doi:10.1016/B978-0-12-558701-3.50007-7

Conceptual framework — free to operationalize with citation. Category definitions are the author's own operational wording, not reproduced verbatim from a copyrighted manual.