Letter: Are emotions a palette built from primaries?

From Giuseppe Sollazzo, London, UK

Lisa Feldman Barrett argues that the way our brain interprets any single emotion is culture-dependent and we “rewire” our brain to conceptualise different emotions (11 March, p 40). Whenever the article mentions one of these “new” emotions, they are always explained as a combination of others.

For example, the Japanese arigata-meiwaku is the negative feeling when someone does you a favour that you didn't want.

I wonder whether there is in fact a set of “primary” emotions which, like primary tastes, forms a basis on which cultural concepts of emotions build.

Lisa Feldman Barrett writes:
• One version of the classical view does propose that a small set of emotions are “basic” and universal. But research shows that people in different cultures have different emotions that feel to them like “primaries”. For example, in situations where a Westerner might feel sad, Tahitians feel an emotion called pe'ape'a which is more similar to “ill” or “fatigued”.