Robert Plutchik

Robert Plutchik (died April 29 of 2006 at 78) was a psychologist.

Psychoevolutionary theory of emotion
Robert Plutchik's psychoevolutionary theory of emotion is one of the most influential classification approaches for general emotional responses. He considered there to be eight primary emotions - anger, fear, sadness, disgust, surprise, curiosity, acceptance and joy. Plutchik proposed that these 'basic' emotions are biologically primitive and have evolved in order to increase the reproductive fitness of the animal. Plutchik argues for the primacy of these emotions by showing each to be the trigger of behaviour with high survival value, such as the way fear inspires the fight-or-flight response.

Publications
Plutchik contributed the "Emotions" article to the encyclopedia, World Book Millenium 2000.