energies · XII / XX · Sphäre C · Geist & Muster · All 20
Eight base emotions. Built from these: everything you feel.
What are the atoms of emotion? Plutchik asked — and answered: four opposing pairs, blendable like colours on a wheel. Forty years later, Cowen & Keltner (2017) had 853 participants rate 2,185 emotion-laden videos. The wheel held.
Do you know that strange state between joy and sorrow — when you say goodbye? That is not confusion. That is the mixed colour of two base emotions: joy (over what was) plus sorrow (over the end). Plutchik calls this a dyad.
I — Structure · Measurable
Plutchik 1980 · Cowen & Keltner 2017 replicated with 27 emotion categories, 8 of which are cluster centres — identical to Plutchik's original. Cross-culturally validated (Cordaro et al. 2024, 26 countries).
II — Flow · Tradition
Rasa theory from the Nāṭyaśāstra (India, ca. 200 BCE): 8 (later 9) base feelings (rasas) — almost one-to-one with Plutchik. A theatrical doctrine that anticipated the research by 2,200 years.
III — Breadth · Synthesis
What tradition described as rasa is today operationalised as emotion clusters. Application: emotional granularity (Feldman Barrett 2017) — the finer you can feel, the more regulated you become.
Plutchik · 8 base emotions
What am I seeing here?
The wheel shows eight base emotions, each in three degrees of intensity — from the outermost, faintest hint to the innermost, most intense form. Opposite sectors are true opposites (e.g. joy ↔ sorrow): not experienceable simultaneously.
Click a sector or tab through with the keyboard (arrow keys navigate, Enter opens). You receive examples, mixed emotions with neighbours, and the scientific evidence for each feeling.
Which dyad arises from joy + trust?
Atlas of blends
From 8 base emotions arise 8 molecules. Choose a blend — see how tradition, research and experience meet.
📐 Workshop · find a word
Granularity — from bad to forsaken.
Feldman Barrett showed: those who can name feelings more finely regulate themselves better. Write a vague feeling — the Seer asks back until the more precise word becomes visible.
What is emotional granularity?
Granularity means the fine resolution at which you can perceive and name your feelings. “Bad” is low-granular — it describes a whole cluster of states without breaking it down.
Higher granularity would be: “forsaken”, “overlooked”, “not-meant” — three different experiences that would all have been filed under “bad”. Those who can differentiate can also act more precisely: what helps with “forsaken” is not what helps with “overlooked”.
Lisa Feldman Barrett showed in fMRI and diary studies: higher granularity correlates with lower affect dysregulation, faster recovery from stress, less risk behaviour. It is trainable — and that is exactly what this tool does.
cartographia affectus · twenty-seven stars
Not eight base emotions. Twenty-seven.
Cowen & Keltner (2017, PNAS) had 853 participants rate 2,185 emotion-loaded videos. Factor analysis found not Plutchik’s eight — but 27 distinctly experienced affect clusters, spanned between valence and arousal. Here is the map.
Cowen-Keltner 27-cluster · PNAS 2017 · AI-supported, not diagnostic
- 1 · Opposites cannot be experienced simultaneously. You will try anyway.