How do words represent emotional states, and how closely are they clustered to an actual emotion? Opinions vary as to how many emotions there are, and whether (or which) emotions are basic. Generally, many agree that basic emotions include fear, anger, joy, sadness, and disgust. Some researchers include surprise, shame, interest, and others as derived emotions. However, all proponents of basic emotions confirm that each emotion reflects a unique motivational and behavioral tendency. These basic

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... emotions are significant in that they represent distinct modes of action and are physiologically distinguishable. Yet, what of the myriad of other words humans use to describe those same emotions? Curiously, many researchers, including neuroscientists, have approached this topic without understanding how well "representative language" describes emotional states. This question prompts my inquiry of how closely correlated emotionally descriptive words are to each other. This study design is a triadic comparison of selected emotion words in two studies; a Positive/Negative word mix, then all Positive or all Negative word presentations to volunteer subjects. The purposes and outcome parameters of this research is to explore how emotion words actually cluster. Utilizing an online survey questionnaire, subjects were presented ten emotion words, three at a time, from which they were asked to select the two most similar.