Emotion Wheel: What It Is And How To Use It

Picture this — you’ve come up with a great idea at work, something revolutionary that’s definitely going to bring your company more money and earn you a promotion, and at the same time guarantee your hero status for life.

You do the right thing and tell your boss about it, and he loves the idea. In fact, he tells you he’s going to work out some issues, discuss them with upper management and get back to you next week.

Before the week is over, you get a memo announcing your boss has been promoted to head a new revolutionary project. You guessed it, right? He stole your idea and presented it as if it were his own. How do you feel?

That’s not an easy question. How does something like that make you feel? Anger, obviously. But there has to be more than that involved. Betrayal? Sadness? Frustration? Maybe there’s even a little relief because the idea of being a hero forever was a bit overwhelming?

In our imaginary situation, you’re going to have many different emotions, ones that compete with others; then there are those that overlap, and maybe even some you’ve never felt before.

Not only that, but let’s say the exact same situation happened to another person. They’re going to have some different emotions than you would. One person might be elated that their idea really was so good, and they feel validated as well. Emotions are very interesting things and can be hard to navigate.

What Is the Emotion Wheel

On average, humans have about 34,000 emotions. It’s actually quite astounding. With that many different emotions and levels of feelings, how are you actually supposed to figure out what you’re feeling? The emotion wheel helps you do just that.

Psychologist Robert Plutchik developed the Plutchik Model of Emotions. This is a wheel centered around eight core emotions that can intensify, become milder, and can combine together to produce new emotional states.

The idea is to look at the wheel and try to determine what your core emotion is, then to move out and around from that area to find layers and nuances of your feelings.

Navigating Emotions With the Emotion Wheel

One way to get a handle on what you’re feeling is to find a way to define your emotions. Imagine if you could understand the intricate layers of feelings and define them. Then you could break apart why you’re having these specific feelings and manage them better.

In our example, you’d expect to feel angry, but what if you find that you’re feeling something like happiness. It’s not really happiness, but you can’t define it. What’s going on there? One way to help you pinpoint your emotions is an emotion wheel.

What Are the Eight Core Emotions

Since a key step in using the Emotion Wheel is understanding your eight-core emotions, it’s worthwhile to spend a minute understanding what those emotions are. Then, do a little self-reflection to see if you can remember a time when you felt each of those emotions.

• Joy

• Trust

• Fear

• Surprise

• Sadness

• Disgust

• Anger

• Anticipation

Interestingly, he does not only identified and labeled eight core emotions, but Plutchik also paired them up into opposites. Looking at his opposite emotions, do you feel that they’re the opposite when you experience these? Or do they blend together sometimes?

• Joy and sadness

• Trust and disgust

• Fear and anger

• Surprise and anticipation

How to Use the Emotion Wheel

Once you start examining the emotion wheel, you instinctively start pairing and dissecting emotions. But three things will jump out at you from the wheel. It’s divided into layers, it features different colors, and there are relations between the emotions.

• Layers. The layers give you more mild emotions at the outside of the wheel, and then the emotions intensify toward the center. They’re so intense that the innermost layer even goes beyond the core emotion. See how anger is represented in the center by rage.

• Colors. The eight emotions have a color assigned to them. As the intensity of the emotion is diminished, the color appears a little more faded in the wheel. This is an easy way to visualize the strength of an emotion. Visualization can be an important part of identification.

• Relations. The relations aspect of the wheel might not jump out at you, but when you understand that opposite emotions are placed across from each other on the wheel, it becomes a little easier to see.

  Then you notice that between the “petals” of core emotions, there exist some other emotions that are combinations. Take, for example, how disgust and sadness can create remorse.

Obviously, the wheel does not represent all 34,000 different emotions, but many of the ones represented can be combined in ways that help you visualize, put words to, and categorize your emotions.

Why Categorize Emotions

So why would you even want to categorize your emotions or understand them? Many people are afraid to even have, feel, or show emotions. Because the key to developing and growing as a person, becoming more evolved, is being able to understand ourselves.

We’re all complex beings. There are things going on physically and mentally that we’re unaware of, things that improve our lives, and things that can take away from our health and enjoyment of life.

By digging deeper and understanding more, we can begin to enjoy more and take advantage of our knowledge to live better lives. This applies to our home and personal lives as well as our professional lives.

Emotions are one of many complex processes that are occurring within us whether we want them there or not. Rather than pushing aside or closing off emotions, the healthier solution is to understand them.

One of the best tools for understanding complex concepts is visualizing them. That’s where this wheel steps in and easily gives you a way to visualize.

Emotional Intelligence EQ

The key to understanding yourself better and pursuing a life of happiness is emotional intelligence, sometimes referred to as emotional quotient or EQ. Emotional intelligence is defined as the ability to understand your emotions and use that knowledge and understanding to manage and handle them.

Having this ability also often translates into being able to understand emotions in others. That can help you assist them with their feelings and emotions, or, in business, it can help you understand motivations and work to better your position and be better liked and understood by your coworkers.

Turning Emotions Into a Study

The best way to use the Emotion Wheel is the way it was initially intended, to understand your own emotions more fully. This involves categorizing your emotions and developing that deep EQ. This takes a little experimenting and studying yourself.

When you’re feeling emotions, train yourself to try to determine where they’re coming from. Then, begin using the wheel to trace them back to the core emotion(s) and determine if there’s something you can do about it.

This is not a one-time study that you get results from and then move on or form all of your decisions based on it. This is an ongoing process of understanding and personal growth.

The good thing is that, with regular practice, it becomes much easier and can almost be automatic. Some people instinctively understand if they’re feeling apprehension about where it’s coming from. That helps them determine the best course of action to move forward and alleviate that stressful emotion.

Using the Emotion Wheel in Business

Now we get down to the brass tacks of it all and how you can translate that knowledge, information about yourself, and the tool of the Emotion Wheel into a business benefit.

As mentioned, when you get to the point where you can understand your emotions and the causes of them better, you can learn how to adapt. Translating that into seeing other people having emotions, identifying them, and learning to manage them can be extremely beneficial.

Imagine the salesperson who sees that someone is actually a little afraid of making a purchase. Why is that? If you know why they’re balking at the sale is fear, you can begin to dig deeper and find out why.

Maybe you have the answer to their question; it’s just that they don’t know how to ask it. Understanding their emotions can help bring that out.

This ability to discern feelings, categorize, visualize, and then act upon them is incredibly useful in all aspects of life and can be used in a number of ways. In addition, the process of becoming more self-aware makes you stronger and more confident. These are traits that also benefit you in business and in life.

Other Emotion Tools

If the Emotion Wheel by Plutchik isn’t working for you, there are some other tools you can try that might resonate more effectively.

• Geneva wheel. The Geneva wheel divides emotions into four quadrants that are further categorized as pleasant and unpleasant, then they’re broken down into those that are within your control and those that you have little or no control over.

• Junto wheel. The Junto wheel goes in the opposite direction and gives you more emotions than Plutchik’s wheel. Some people may like this division of emotions because it gives you more words to identify and categorize your emotions.

Essentially, all of these wheels used to classify emotions do the same thing. They break down what you’re feeling visual and give you words to help categorize. Once you do that, you can identify, understand, manage, and respond.

Taking it a step further, you can begin to identify emotions in others, even complex emotions. This gives you the ability to have a deeper understanding which can translate to advantages in business and in your personal life.

Final Thoughts

Having learned about what the emotion wheel is all about, you should take a deep breath and see if you can provide an answer to the following questions — How could a deeper understanding of your emotions and the emotions of others play into our introduction scenario?

What could the employee have done differently to manage her emotions when she first came up with the idea and how she presented it? What about her response to her boss and to his bosses? Is there something that can be gained from understanding emotions that makes this situation better?

Author

Kristin Kizer

Kristin Kizer is an award-winning writer, television and documentary producer, and content specialist who has worked on a wide variety of written, broadcast, and electronic publications. A former writer/producer for The Discovery Channel, she is now a freelance writer and delighted to be sharing her talents and time with the wonderful Zippia audience.