Human beings have seven basic emotions: joy, sadness, fear, anger, disgust, contempt, and surprise. An emotion is a basic emotion if it has been scientifically demonstrated to be expressed and recognized the same by all cultures. In effect, a basic emotion has been shown to be associated with a specific set of facial expressions. This sounds simple in practice, but there are a lot of misconceptions that people have about the seven basic emotions. Here are three common ones that I've seen. 1. … [Read more...]