The 8 Plutchik emotions
The Plutchik emotions form one of the world's most widely used emotion models, also called the Plutchik emotion wheel. Forum Research uses the Plutchik emotion wheel when classifying emotions from implicit experience research, image research, or employee research. An advantage of the model with the 8 Plutchik emotions is that it is a balanced model: next to each emotion is the opposite emotion. Opposite joy is sadness, opposite anticipation is surprise, and so on. In addition, the Plutchik emotion wheel distinguishes different intensities for each emotion. Each emotion has an intense and diminished form. For example, the intense form of joy is ecstasy and the weakened form is serenity.
The importance of the intensity of Plutchik emotions
From a marketing or employer perspective, measuring the intensity of the Plutchik emotions that customers or employees have around a brand, product, or employer experience is very important. Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman has shown in his groundbreaking studies that the more intense the emotional experience is, the deeper it is imprinted in memory and the longer we remember this experience. This makes the impact of the experience on future choices of our customers or employees more significant. Forum Research measures not only what emotions are present in employees or customers, but also the intensity of these emotions. This makes the Plutchik emotions wheel the best model for classifying these emotions.
How does measuring Plutchik emotions work?
Measuring Plutchik emotions is Forum Research's specialty. In recent years we have done a lot of research on the best way to retrieve emotions from customers, prospects, and employees.
One of the prerequisites for measuring emotions is that you ask the right questions. For example, it has been shown that emotions can hardly be extracted from the open-ended explanations of satisfaction or NPS questions. These question types appeal to the conscious cognitive system in our brain, while emotions are formed in the subconscious intuitive system.
Forum therefore applies quantitative association research. This enables us to penetrate the intuitive system of customers, prospects, and employees. We then deploy artificial intelligence, in the form of self-developed text analysis, to classify the Plutchik emotions and their intensity from the open explanations.