71 articles
Grief
Grief is the anguish after significant loss, usually a death; distinct from bereavement and mourning. Covers symptoms, theories (five stages, dual-process, continuing bonds), prolonged grief disorder in ICD-11/DSM-5-TR, and neurobiology.
Guilt (emotion)
Guilt is a self-conscious moral emotion about a specific wrongdoing, distinct from shame, which targets the self; it motivates apology and repair, predicts better outcomes than shame-proneness, and shows measurable neural and cross-cultural correlates.
Happiness
Happiness, in research terms subjective well-being, spans hedonic pleasure and eudaimonic meaning. Covered: its two traditions, measurement via the Cantril ladder and Gallup World Poll, and income, social, and genetic determinants.
Hatred
Hatred (hate): a hostile emotion and lasting attitude combining detestation, anger, and often a desire to harm, distinct from dislike, anger, contempt, and disgust by higher arousal, personal threat, attack tendencies, and moralized content.
Hope
Hope in psychology is positive expectation for the future, defined most influentially by Snyder's theory as agency plus pathways thinking toward goals; distinct from optimism, measured by the Adult Hope Scale, and linked to better mental and physical health.
Humiliation
Humiliation: a self-conscious emotion of undeserved social degradation before an audience, distinct from shame by perceived unfairness, combining anger-like outrage with shame-like powerlessness.
Hysteria
Hysteria, from Greek hystera (uterus), is a historical medical diagnosis for unexplained physical and neurological complaints. Abandoned by DSM-III in 1980, it survives as conversion disorder, dissociative disorders, histrionic personality disorder, and functional neurological disorder.
Infatuation
Infatuation: intense passion toward a specific person in the early stages of romantic love, also called passionate love or limerence. Marked by intrusive thoughts, idealization, and exclusivity; from Latin infatuare, "make a fool of."
Jealousy
Jealousy, an affective state triggered by a perceived threat to a valued relationship by a rival, is studied as romantic jealousy with cognitive, emotional, and behavioral components; distinct from envy, it shows small average sex differences in responses to sexual versus emotional infidelity.
Laughter
Laughter: rhythmic social vocalization shared with great apes for about 15 million years, signaling harmless intentions via reward, affiliation, and dominance functions, driven by dual cingulo-temporal and motor-opercular brain systems.
Limerence
Limerence is a psychological state of involuntary, obsessive attachment to one person, with intrusive thoughts and a strong desire for reciprocation, coined in 1979 by psychologist Dorothy Tennov.
Loneliness
Loneliness is the subjective distress from a gap between desired and actual social connections, distinct from social isolation and solitude. WHO estimates 1 in 6 people affected, ~871,000 deaths yearly; emotional and social types; measured by UCLA and de Jong Gierveld scales.
Misanthropy
Misanthropy, from Greek misanthropia, is hatred, dislike, or distrust of humankind in general. Covers its ancient medical history, philosophical forms (Kidd, Kant, Schopenhauer), psychological measurement, and distinction from depression, cynicism, and social anxiety.
Mood (psychology)
Mood (psychology): a prolonged, diffuse feeling state, milder and longer-lasting than emotion and lacking a clear cause. Also called affective state; measured with ecological momentary assessment; regulated by circadian clocks and linked to depression, anxiety, and cardiovascular health.
Nostalgia
Nostalgia: sentimental longing for one's past; once a 1688 medical diagnosis of homesickness coined by Johannes Hofer from Greek nostos and algos, now studied as a predominantly positive, bittersweet emotion with well-being benefits.
Optimism
Optimism is the psychological disposition of expecting good outcomes, studied as dispositional optimism (Life Orientation Test) and explanatory style; distinct from unrealistic optimism, and linked to lower mortality (RR 0.85) and cardiovascular risk.
Paris syndrome
Paris syndrome (Syndrome de Paris; パリ症候群, Pari shōkōgun) is a transient culture-shock disorder mainly in Japanese tourists in Paris, with delusions, hallucinations, persecution feelings, and psychosomatic symptoms; coined by Hiroaki Ōta, not in diagnostic manuals.
Passion (emotion)
Passion (emotion): in psychology, a strong inclination toward a valued activity one loves and invests time in, split by Vallerand's dualistic model into harmonious and obsessive passion, measured by the Passion Scale.
Positive and Negative Affect Schedule
The Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) is a self-report questionnaire measuring positive and negative affect as separate dimensions, introduced by Watson, Clark, and Tellegen in 1988.
Post-coital tristesse
Post-coital tristesse, or postcoital dysphoria (PCD), "post-sex blues", is tearfulness, sadness, anxiety, or irritability after otherwise satisfactory consensual sex; reported in about 46% of women and 41% of men in surveys.
Pride
Pride is a self-conscious emotion that arises when a goal is attained and others recognize and approve the achievement, covering both genuine accomplishment and arrogance.
Psychological pain
Psychological pain, also called mental pain, psychache, or psychic pain, is sustained emotional suffering studied mainly in suicide research. Ten self-rated scales (1999-2021) measure it, led by the Psychache Scale, but validity evidence is weak.
Rage (emotion)
Rage: intense, violent, often uncontrolled anger at the explosive end of the anger continuum, spanning impulsive outbursts and planned aggression; studied via limbic-prefrontal circuits, DSM-5-TR disorders, and regulation research.
Reappraisal task
The reappraisal task is an experimental paradigm in emotion research in which participants reinterpret negative pictures or film clips, with the drop in negative affect scoring their reappraisal ability.
Reduced affect display
Reduced affect display, also called blunted affect or emotional blunting, is diminished outward emotional expression through face, voice, and gestures. It affects about 30% of people with schizophrenia, is a negative symptom, and is rated with instruments such as the BNSS, CAINS, and SANS.
Resentment
Resentment is a persistent moral emotion arising from perceived injustice, distinct from envy; its philosophical history runs from Butler and Smith through Strawson's reactive attitudes to Nietzsche and Scheler's ressentiment.
Sadness
Sadness: a basic human emotion triggered by loss or disappointment, expressed in face, tears, and physiology, and distinguished from clinical depression by duration, triggers, and course.
Saudade
Saudade (Portuguese and Galician) is a bittersweet longing for an absent person, place, or past. From Latin solitatem via soidade; central to fado, saudosismo, and Brazilian culture; studied empirically with a three-factor scale.
Schadenfreude
Schadenfreude, from German Schaden (harm) + Freude (joy), is pleasure at another's misfortune, an emotion distinct from gloating and sadism; studied since the OED's 19th-century entry, triggered by deservedness, envy, and rivalry, and linked to ventral striatum reward activity.
Sehnsucht
Sehnsucht is the German concept of intense, often painful longing for ideal, unattainable states of life, distinct from nostalgia; studied in lifespan psychology by Baltes and Scheibe with six core characteristics and cross-cultural comparisons.