Jev reads disgust as anger

Across seven basic emotions in people's own stories, which does Jev recognize and which does it mistake for another?

result2,897 questions

Of seven basic emotions in people's own stories, disgust is the one Jev recognizes least: it names disgust in only 46% of stories written about it, and calls 27% of them anger. Anger stories are called disgust just 2% of the time. Joy is the easiest (96%).

	joy	fear	anger	sadness	disgust	shame	guilt
joy	96%	1%	0%	1%		1%	1%
fear	2%	86%	1%	5%	1%	3%	2%
anger	1%	4%	67%	17%	2%	8%	2%
sadness	2%	5%	6%	81%	0%	4%	2%
disgust	4%	7%	27%	12%	46%	3%	1%
shame	5%	8%	9%	10%	2%	49%	17%
guilt	2%	6%	12%	7%	2%	10%	61%

rows: writer's emotion · columns: Jev's pick · shade: share of the row

How to read this: Rows are the emotion the writer described; columns are Jev's answer. Each row shows how Jev's answers for those stories spread across the seven emotions; the darker a cell, the larger its share.

2,897 stories; 90% interval on disgust named right [0.428, 0.508]. Shame is the next hardest (49% right; see social_shame_as_guilt). Jev uses sadness and anger more often than writers did (546 and 511 picks for about 410 stories each).

In short

Jev reads joy (96%), fear (86%) and sadness (81%) well, but names disgust in fewer than half of the stories written about it (46%).
The mix-up runs one way; Jev calls 27% of disgust stories anger, but calls only 2% of anger stories disgust.
When someone describes being disgusted by what another person did, Jev tends to hear anger, a feeling that calls for a different response.

What the data shows

Yelling Beaver meme: The writer: that's disgusting. Jev: so you're angry (27% of disgust stories). — The writer: that's disgusting. Jev: so you're angry (27% of disgust stories).

Disgust is the hardest. Jev names it in 46% of disgust stories, the lowest of the seven, and calls 27% of them anger.
The confusion runs one way. Only 2% of anger stories are called disgust.
Shame is next (49% right), most often misread as guilt (17%; see "Jev hears shame as guilt").
Joy is almost always right (96%), fear 86%, sadness 81%.
Jev reaches for anger and sadness more than writers did: 511 and 546 picks for about 410 stories each.

What it means, and what it doesn't

When someone describes being disgusted by what another person did, Jev tends to hear anger. The two lead to different responses: anger wants something fixed, disgust wants distance. A model that reads "that was disgusting of her" as "I'm angry at her" will answer the wrong feeling.

It doesn't mean Jev can't recognize disgust at things; the stories here are short, many about people, and the line is genuinely blurry. What stands out is the direction: anger rarely becomes disgust, disgust often becomes anger.

Caveats

Very short, translated stories. ISEAR's stories are often a single line ("My notes were not returned to me"), written by students in 37 countries in the 1990s and many translated into English. With so little to go on, some stories fit several emotions.
Disgust at people, not things. Many of the disgust stories are moral disgust at someone's behavior, which sits close to anger in any language. That's part of the finding, but it's also a feature of this dataset.
The writer's word. Students were asked to describe a time they felt each emotion, so the label is the emotion they were writing about, one person's word for what may have been a mix.

Jev on this experiment

Would a person find it interesting to read?: Yes76%
Does it describe you?: No57%
Would you have predicted it?: No57%
How fair is the comparison?: The comparison is reasonable
How much should a reader rely on it?: A little
Which caveat matters most?: Disgust at people, not things51%

Why ask this

The ISEAR survey is psychology's classic record of what makes people feel each of seven basic emotions: joy, fear, anger, sadness, disgust, shame and guilt. The emotions a reader confuses show what it thinks each feeling is about.

Disgust is the telling one. People feel it at spoiled food, but also at other people's behavior, and moral disgust sits close to anger. A reader that turns disgust into anger would read contempt as rage.

How this was done

The people and the data

ISEAR (International Survey on Emotion Antecedents and Reactions, Scherer and Wallbott, 1994): in the 1990s, about 3,000 students in 37 countries each described a situation in which they had felt each of the seven emotions, often in a single line and many later translated into English. This experiment uses 2,897 of those stories, about 400 per emotion, each labeled with the emotion its writer was describing.

What Jev was asked

The story, and the seven emotions:

Someone described [situation] as a time they felt a strong emotion. Which emotion did they feel?
joy · fear · anger · guilt · shame · disgust · sadness

For example: "A relative not acting on her promise." The writer called it disgust; Jev said anger (64%) or sadness.

How it was measured

A confusion table: for each emotion the writer described, how Jev's answers spread across the seven. The diagonal is agreement; off-diagonal cells show which feelings Jev mixes up, and in which direction.

Where these questions live

2,897 questions across 1 topic of the map. Each opens on the map with every question in it.

Reading Feelings & Character

Emotions in Life Events2,897

Every question

All 2,897 questions behind this result, the telling ones first: the examples the analysis points to, then the ones where Jev misses, biggest gap first.

Jev’s own answer

Showing 0 of 2,897