Basic emotions such as fear and anger are held to be innate and universal.

This claim is called the “basic emotion approach” (Ekman, 1992). Second, they assert that each emotion produces a facial expression that is quickly recognized by others.

Basic emotions are so-called because they are associated with distinct and universally recognizable facial expressions (Ekman & Friesen, 1971).

Ekman’s Six Basic Emotions The psychologist Paul Ekman formulated an early and influential version of what later became known as basic emotions theory.

In the 20th century, Paul Ekman identified six basic emotions (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise) and Robert Plutchik eight, which he had in oppositional pairs (joy-sadness ...

The Basic Emotion Approach Charles Darwin (1872) conducted the first detailed investigation of emotions in his book, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals.

However, many complex emotions cannot be deconstructed into more basic ones, and the theory does not explain why infants and animals do not share (or appear to share) in complex emotions.