lifestyle

We're really not sure how to feel about this post. You'll know what we mean in a minute.

 

For as long as we can remember, science has said that there are six basic emotions – and they’re roughly based on the names of Dwarfs. Humans have been limited – nay, confined – to being happy, sad, fearful, angry, surprised or disgusted.

But scientists have just announced that actually, we have a more complex range of emotions.

Kim Kardashian

Maybe they observed the full range of expressive emoticons available to the average smartphone user, and said, “man, we better keep up with those little smiley faces.”

Or possibly, one of them had their heart broken and realised there weren’t strong enough words at her disposal to describe the experience.

Whatever. This development has several implications for our everyday lives.

Now, when we say “I’m feeling all the feelings,” we’re now technically feeling more feelings than we’ve felt before.

Whenever we say we’re “eating our feelings,” we’ll just have to buy more ice cream.

And when we say, “I feel ya on that,” well… we’re going to have to more specific.

Here’s the full set of human “emotion categories” –  as decreed by Science and demonstrated by this one really expressive guy.

So, yes, now we can officially be “happily disgusted” and “disgustedly surprised”. We can finally be openly “sadly fearful” or “fearfully surprised” if we want.

This is what Associate Professor Aleix Martinez, who lead the study at Ohio State University,said about the discovery: “We cannot fully understand our cognitive system … if we do not study the full rainbow of expressions that our brain can produce.”

We can’t help thinking that maybe there are more emotions just waiting to be felt and named.

Are there any emotions these scientists have left out? Can you think of a time you’ve ever been “happily disgusted”?

 

Tags: