1. The concept of emotion is applicable to all evolutionary levels and applies to animals as well as to humans.
2. Emotions have an evolutionary history and have evolved various forms of expression in different species.
3. Emotions served an adaptive role in helping organisms deal with key survival issues posed by the environment.
4. Despite different forms of expression of emotions in different species, there are certain common elements, or prototype patterns, that can be identified.
5. There is a small number of basic, primary, or prototype emotions.
6. All other emotions are mixed or derivative states; that is, they occur as combinations, mixtures, or compounds of the primary emotions.
7. Primary emotions are hypothethical constructs or idealized states whose properties and characteristics can only be inferred from various kinds of evidence.
8. Primary emotions can be conceptualized in terms of pairs of polar opposites.
9. All emotions vary in their degree of similarity to one another.
10. Each emotion can exist in varying degrees of intensity or levels of arousal.

	Basic Emotions	Basis for Inclusion
Plutchik	Acceptance, anger, anticipation, disgust, joy, fear, sadness, surprise	Relation to adaptive biological processes
Arnold	Anger, aversion, courage, dejection, desire, despair, fear, hate, hope, love, sadness	Relation to action tendencies
Ekman, Friesen, and Ellsworth	Anger, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, surprise	Universal facial expressions
Frijda	Desire, happiness, interest, surprise, wonder, sorrow	Forms of action readiness
Gray	Rage and terror, anxiety, joy	Hardwired
Izard	Anger, contempt, disgust, distress, fear, guilt, interest, joy, shame, surprise	Hardwired
James	Fear, grief, love, rage	Bodily involvement
McDougall	Anger, disgust, elation, fear, subjection, tender-emotion, wonder	Relation to instincts
Mowrer	Pain, pleasure	Unlearned emotional states
Oatley and Johnson-Laird	Anger, disgust, anxiety, happiness, sadness	Do not require propositional content
Panksepp	Expectancy, fear, rage, panic	Hardwired
Tomkins	Anger, interest, contempt, disgust, distress, fear, joy, shame, surprise	Density of neural firing
Watson	Fear, love, rage	Hardwired
Weiner and Graham	Happiness, sadness	Attribution independent
	Basic Emotions	Basis for Inclusion

(This table is taken from Ortony and Turner, 1990.)

References

Plutchik, R. (1980). A general psychoevolutionary theory of emotion. In R. Plutchik & H. Kellerman (Eds.), Emotion: Theory, research, and experience: Vol. 1. Theories of emotion (pp. 3-33). New York: Academic.

Last modified April 1998
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