Categories of Emotions

The list of emotions a typical pre-K child understands may be limited to happy, mad, sad, and scared (Harter, S., & Buddin, B. J.), but as they grow, the list expands, and they develop a more nuanced vocabulary to explain how they feel.

Over the past 40 years, several frameworks have emerged to describe and categorize emotions. There is the Plutchik Wheel of Emotions, Ekmans’ Atlas of Emotions, and many others, but for this article, we are sharing a tree-like framework created by Dr. Phillip Shaver and his colleagues at the University of Denver.

In 1987, Shaver and his colleagues published Emotion Knowledge: Further Exploration of a Prototype Approach where they outlined a three-level hierarchy of emotions and categorized words within that hierarchy. In the paper, they identified six primary emotions: Anger, Fear, Joy, Love, Sadness, and Surprise – And they identified 25 secondary emotions and 135 words that represent more descriptive tertiary emotions.

Here is the complete list of emotions and how they are categorized:

1. Anger
   • Disgust: Contempt, disgust, revulsion
   • Envy: Envy, jealousy
   • Exasperation: Exasperation, frustration
   • Irritation: Aggravation, agitation, annoyance, grouchiness, grumpiness, irritation
   • Rage: Anger, bitterness, dislike, ferocity, fury, hate, hostility, loathing, outrage, rage, resentment, scorn, spite, vengefulness, wrath
   • Torment: Torment
2. Fear
   • Horror: Alarm, fear, fright, horror, hysteria, mortification, panic, shock, terror
   • Nervousness: Anxiety, apprehension, distress, dread, nervousness, tenseness, uneasiness, worry
3. Joy
   • Cheerfulness: Amusement, bliss, cheerfulness, delight, ecstasy, elation, enjoyment, euphoria, gaiety, gladness, glee, happiness, jolliness, joviality, joy, jubilation, satisfaction
   • Contentment: Contentment, pleasure
   • Enthrallment: Enthrallment, rapture
   • Optimism: Eagerness, hope, optimism
   • Pride: Pride, triumph
   • Relief: Relief
   • Zest: Enthusiasm, excitement, exhilaration, thrill, zeal, zest
4. Love
   • Affection: Adoration, affection, attraction, caring, compassion, fondness, liking, love, sentimentality, tenderness
   • Longing: Longing
   • Lust: Arousal, desire, infatuation, lust, passion
5. Sadness
   • Disappointment: Disappointment, dismay, displeasure
   • Neglect: Alienation, defeat, dejection, embarrassment, homesickness, humiliation, insecurity, isolation, insult, loneliness, neglect, rejection
   • Sadness: Depression, despair, gloom, glumness, grief, hopelessness, melancholy, misery, sadness, sorrow, unhappiness, woe
   • Shame: Guilt, regret, remorse, shame
   • Suffering: Agony, anguish, hurt, suffering
   • Sympathy: Pity, sympathy
6. Surprise
   • Surprise: Amazement, astonishment, surprise