FIVE FUNDAMENTAL EMOTIONS

Of the five fundamental discrete emotions, four are generally judged to be ‘negative’ – fear/anxiety, anger, sadness and disgust – and one to be ‘positive’ – happiness. Although there is only one positive emotion, the negative emotions are not always experienced as negative. In fact, the distinction between positive and negative emotions may not be altogether appropriate, as we shall see.
Anxiety will be discussed later in this chapter when we consider abnormalities in emotion. Fear is directed towards specific objects or events; it alerts us to danger and prompts us to escape or avoid. Anger, on the other hand, is quite different. In a perceptive analysis of anger, Averill (1982) argues that it is an emotion about conflict, and is inevitably linked to aggression. However, even though aggression might be biologically determined, Averill sees anger as largely socially constructed, aimed at correcting perceived wrongs and upholding standards of conduct. As such, the experience of anger is not necessarily negative. The third specific emotion, sadness, has a directness that makes it seem a little less negative than some of the other negative emotions. It is usually a reaction to loss that slows us down into discouragement, downheartedness and loneliness. Grief is an extreme and very complex form of sadness and always involves the loss of something, or more usually, someone, of great importance to s. Izard (e.g. 1991) describes grief as including sadness, anger, disgust, contempt, fear, guilt and shyness, and shock, protest, despair and reorganisation. The last of the negative emotions, disgust, is very primitive. Its central concern is with the rapid expulsion from the body of any substance that might be toxic, noxious or harmful to it. Happiness, joy, elation, and so on, seem to be variations on a theme. In recent years, there has been an increasing emphasis on the study of ‘positive psychology’ (embracing constructs such as happiness) in contrast to the study of what might be termed ‘negative psychology’ (Positive Psychology Center, University of Pennsylvania, by Martin Seligman and colleagues: www.positivepsychology.org ). However, Averill and More (1993) argue that happiness is difficult to understand because it can take on so many different meanings.