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Why the answer is more complicated than it seems.

Some emotions are so ancient that we share them with lizards.

One day, while holidaying in Mauritius, I opened a kitchen drawer to find a large lizard staring back at me. Before I had time to think, I jumped back and slammed the drawer shut. Only afterwards did I notice that my heart was racing and my body primed for action. But as soon as reason reasserted itself, the fear evaporated, leaving me with nothing more than a mildly inconvenient lizard problem—which, if memory serves, I chose to ignore.

The lizard’s reaction, of course, was just as swift, if not swifter. It darted for cover before either of us had had time to think. In that split second, human and reptile behaved in remarkably similar ways.

This encounter raises an intriguing question. Are some emotions so ancient and basic that they are shared across much of the animal kingdom?

An Ancient Idea

The idea that some emotions are more fundamental than others is an old one. The Book of Rites, one of the Confucian classics, identifies seven basic ‘feelings of men’: joy, anger, sadness, fear, love, liking, and disliking.

In the twentieth century, psychologists sought a more scientific answer. Paul Ekman proposed six universal emotions—anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise—while Robert Plutchik proposed eight, arranged in opposing pairs.

The theory was simple and elegant. These emotions evolved because they solved recurring problems faced by our remote ancestors. Fear helped us escape danger. Disgust kept us away from disease. Anger enabled us to defend ourselves and our resources. Being evolutionarily ancient, these basic emotions are thought to be ‘hard-wired’: fast, automatic, and largely unconscious.

It’s an appealing idea—and Plutchik’s Wheel does look striking. But is it true?

Is Fear the Most Basic Emotion?

The difficulty is that psychologists cannot even agree on the list. Some propose six basic emotions, others seven or eight, still others many more.

But there is one emotion on which almost everyone agrees: fear. Fear is found almost everywhere in the animal kingdom. A gazelle bolts before a lion. A cat startles at a loud noise. A lizard darts for cover. Before any of these creatures has had time to think, its body has already kicked in.

Fear, more than any other, may be the prototype of a basic emotion.

Beyond Fear

Other emotions are less straightforward. Take anger. We often become angry not simply because something unpleasant has happened, but because we believe we have been insulted, cheated, or treated unfairly. Those judgements involve much more than an unthinking reflex.

Someone pushes past you in a queue. If you assume they simply failed to notice you, you may feel only mild irritation. But if you conclude that they deliberately ignored you because they think they’re more important than you, you are much more likely to become angry. Same event. Different interpretation.

Even fear, perhaps the most basic of all emotions, can be triggered by beliefs and values that are themselves shaped by culture. Imagine waking up in a cold sweat, believing that you have slept through an important exam. Your panic has little to do with the examination itself, and everything to do with what the examination represents: success or failure, opportunity or disappointment, status, perhaps even self-worth. A lizard can fear a predator, but not an examination. The emotional machinery may be ancient, but what sets it in motion is often anything but.

With fear, culture often shapes the object of the emotion. With more complex emotions, it can shape the emotion itself. Schadenfreude (German, ‘harm-joy’)—the pleasure derived from another person’s misfortune—is not common to all peoples in all times.

Neither is romantic love, which seems to have emerged in tandem with the novel. In Madame Bovary, itself a novel, Gustave Flaubert tells us that Emma Bovary only found out about romantic love through ‘the refuse of old lending libraries’.

The Emotional Animal

The search for the basic emotions has taught us something important, even if it has failed to produce a definitive list.

Some emotions are so ancient that we share them even with birds, lizards, and fish, although what triggers them may be entirely different and shaped by our beliefs and values. Others depend increasingly upon language, memory, imagination, and culture.

Perhaps, then, the question is not Which emotions are basic?

It is How much of every emotion is basic?

The startle reflex, the racing heart, and the impulse to flee belong to our evolutionary inheritance. But what those responses are directed towards—and, in more complex emotions, even the emotions themselves—are increasingly shaped by language, culture, and the stories we tell ourselves.

Our emotions are at once among the oldest things about us—and among the newest.