What are the 27 emotions, in order?

The 27 emotions come from a 2017 study by psychologists Alan Cowen and Dacher Keltner at UC Berkeley, who found 27 distinct kinds of emotional experience in people's reactions to 2,185 short videos (Cowen and Keltner, 2017). They have no ranked order: the study found that each one blends into its neighbours, which is why the real value of the list is in helping you name what you feel more precisely, beyond vague words like stressed or bad.

The 27 emotions from the Berkeley study

In alphabetical order, since the study itself gives no ranking, the 27 categories are: admiration, adoration, aesthetic appreciation, amusement, anger, anxiety, awe, awkwardness, boredom, calmness, confusion, craving, disgust, empathic pain, entrancement, excitement, fear, horror, interest, joy, nostalgia, relief, romance, sadness, satisfaction, sexual desire, and surprise.

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The researchers started with 34 candidate emotions. Seven of them did not stand apart as their own category in people's reports: pride and triumph overlapped with admiration, contempt and disappointment overlapped with anger, sympathy overlapped with empathic pain and sadness, and guilt and envy barely registered with these videos. That does not mean those feelings are not real. It means that, in this study, people did not report them as distinct experiences.

Why emotion naming matters more than you think

Most people have a surprisingly limited emotional vocabulary. They say "I'm stressed" or "I'm bad" when what they actually mean varies wildly: are you overwhelmed, frustrated, disappointed, exhausted, or anxious? They are fundamentally different experiences. Lumping them together muddles your understanding of what you actually need.

This precision is called emotional granularity. The full explainer is emotional granularity. Research on emotion differentiation shows that people who can distinguish between emotions in finer detail report better emotional well-being and recover faster from stress. It is not because naming a feeling changes the feeling itself. It is because the moment you name it accurately, you understand what you actually need: if you're frustrated, you need to problem-solve or set a boundary. If you're exhausted, you need rest. If you're disappointed, you need time to let go of a specific expectation. These are not the same response, and precise naming points you toward the right one.

Lists like the 27, and emotion wheels, exist for this reason: to give you language for the things you already feel but struggle to put into words.

Other ways emotions are categorized

Basic emotions: the foundation

Psychologist Paul Ekman's research on facial expressions across cultures identified 6 emotions that appear to be universal: happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, and disgust (Ekman, 1992). These are sometimes called the basic emotions, not because they are simpler or more important than others, but because many other feelings can be understood as variations or blends of them.

Anger and disgust are related; so are fear and surprise. Contentment is a softened version of happiness. Resentment is often described as anger mixed with disappointment. Jealousy mixes several emotions at once.

The Feeling Wheel: a practical map

Therapist Gloria Willcox created the Feeling Wheel in 1982 as a practical tool for helping people move past vague language (Willcox, 1982). It arranges a few broad feelings at the centre, built from mad, sad, scared and glad, with glad split into joyful, powerful and peaceful, and more specific feelings radiating outward from each one.

So a vague "mad" might turn out, once you look closer, to be frustration, hurt or resentment. This structure makes it easier to zoom in on the exact shade of emotion you are in, without having to memorize a list.

Many versions of the wheel exist today, with different centres and different numbers of words. None is more "correct" than the others. The principle is the same: emotions cluster around shared qualities, and naming the specific one helps you understand what is actually happening.

Why there is no definitive "27 emotions in order"

The Berkeley study's own headline finding is that emotions are not separate boxes. Its title describes 27 categories "bridged by continuous gradients": awe shades into admiration and aesthetic appreciation, and anxiety shades into fear, horror and disgust (Cowen and Keltner, 2017). Where one feeling ends and another begins is not a sharp line, so there is no natural first or last.

Different frameworks also count emotions differently. Ekman proposed 6 basic emotions, Plutchik 8 primary ones, Cowen and Keltner 27 categories, and cultures do not always carve feelings up the same way. Some languages have a single word for what English splits into several emotions, and others have distinctions English misses.

This is actually useful to know. There is no single correct way to think about your emotions. You are not failing at emotion-naming if you use a different framework than someone else. You are just using a different map of the same territory.

How to use emotion models practically

Rather than memorize a list, the more practical question is: which model helps you understand yourself?

Start with Ekman's basic emotions if you want a simple, research-backed foundation. When you feel something, ask: is this a version of happy, sad, angry, afraid, surprised, or disgusted? Then zoom in. If you landed on angry, is it frustration? Resentment? Jealousy? The specificity is where the insight lives.

Use a feelings wheel if you want a more detailed map. Solace's Feelings Wheel starts from Ekman's six: happy, sad, angry, fearful, surprised, and disgusted. Each one branches out into more specific emotions. When you feel something hard to name, you can move through the wheel until the word lands.

Reach for the 27 when a feeling is hard to place on a simpler map. Words like nostalgia, awe, empathic pain or awkwardness name experiences that do not fit neatly under any of the six basic emotions.

Or use Plutchik's Wheel of Emotions if you want to understand how emotions mix. Robert Plutchik proposed that emotions combine like colors on a painter's palette: fear and surprise might mix to create awe. Anger and disgust might create contempt. This model is less practical for everyday reflection, but it is useful if you are trying to understand a complex feeling that seems to have multiple strands.

The point is not that one model is right. The point is that the moment you have words for what you are feeling, you have choices. You can name the feeling. You can ask what it is trying to tell you. You can think about what you actually need.

One thing to try

Next time you say "I feel stressed" or "I feel bad," pause and ask: what shade is this feeling, exactly? Use whichever emotion model resonates with you, or simply ask yourself: is this frustration, exhaustion, disappointment, anxiety, or something else? Write down the more specific word. Notice what shifts.

Precision is not about having perfect language. It is about having enough language to hear yourself.

Sources

• Cowen, A. S., & Keltner, D. (2017). Self-report captures 27 distinct categories of emotion bridged by continuous gradients. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114(38), E7900-E7909
• University of California, Berkeley (2017). Emoji fans take heart: Scientists pinpoint 27 states of emotion. Berkeley News
• Ekman, P. (1992). An argument for basic emotions. Cognition and Emotion, 6(3-4), 169-200
• Willcox, G. (1982). The Feeling Wheel: A tool for expanding awareness of emotions and increasing spontaneity and intimacy. Transactional Analysis Journal, 12(4), 274-276

Solace offers practical tools for self-understanding, not medical advice. If emotions feel overwhelming, unmanageable, or are affecting your daily life, it is worth speaking with a therapist or a qualified mental-health professional.