Plutchik and economics: ‘...Disgust, Fear, and, Oh Yes, Love’

Abstract

One of the most challenging endeavours economic theorists currently face is the integration of emotions in the conceptual frameworks used to explain the choices and the behaviour of agents. Emotional decisions are much harder to understand, evaluate and analyse than rational ones, because emotions are diffuse, difficult to isolate and to categorise, and also because they correspond to personal inner-states that might be externalised in so many different ways. This paper suggests the use of a possible classification of emotions in order to guide economists when developing their emotional-oriented decision-making models. The classification is the one proposed by psychologist Robert Plutchik through his popular ‘wheel of emotions’, a diagram that highlights the existence of a few basic emotions that might acquire, each of them, various different tones or intensities.