More is felt than understood. Emotion is not noise in the system — it is the system: the signal that tells us what matters, what to remember, what to approach and avoid, and what to change. We learn through what moves us, and we grow by getting better at naming it. This atlas exists to make the invisible legible — a map of the feelings that shape attention, memory, learning, and growth, so that what we feel can become something we understand.
The data layer is the Human Emotion Ontology (HEO): a synthesis of the major frameworks in affective science — basic emotion theory (Ekman, Plutchik), dimensional models (Russell's circumplex, PAD), appraisal theories (Smith & Ellsworth, OCC), the Geneva Emotion Wheel, constructionist approaches (Barrett), and affective neuroscience (Panksepp) — plus cross-cultural research and philosophical distinctions. No framework is treated as canonical: disagreements are preserved as data, and every state and relationship carries a confidence grade and citations.
Interactive tools
Ontology Diagram
Force-directed graph of all 413 states with category coloring, edge-type filters, search, and a Valence × Arousal map view. Freeze the layout and click any node to inspect it.
Open the graph → self-identificationEmotion Finder
Describe what you're feeling — dimensional sliders, situation signals, body sensations, action urges, or a clickable body map — and get live-ranked candidate states with full context cards. Profiles are shareable via the URL.
Identify a feeling → guidedtwineEmotion Journey
A choose-your-own-adventure through your feelings. Answer a few questions and arrive at a named state with its ontology data card. The story source is genuine Twee — editable in Twine 2.
Start the journey →Research & documentation
- 1. Research Report — The Landscape of Emotion Science and What Can Be SynthesizedThis report summarizes the major theoretical families that the ontology draws on,
- 2. Ontology Design — Schema, Edge Semantics, and Representational ModelThe ontology is designed to answer the question: can it represent the emotional
- 3. Taxonomy — From Broad Affective Categories to Specific StatesThis document shows the conceptual hierarchy from the superordinate category down
- 4. Disagreement Registry — Where Researchers DisagreeThis registry documents the major active disagreements in emotion science and how
- 5. Confidence ModelEvery node and every edge carries two related but distinct fields:
- 6. Coverage Analysis — What the Ontology Captures Well and What It Misses- 413 nodes: 242 emotions, 31 structural groupers (15 category roots + 16
Datasets (machine-readable)
- data/emotions.jsoncanonical nodes — definitions, dimensions, appraisals, confidence (schema: schema/emotion-node.schema.json)
- data/relationships.jsongraph edges — 18 types, qualitative strength, confidence, citations (schema: schema/relationship.schema.json)
- data/ontology-meta.jsonedge-type semantics, dimension & confidence rubrics, source bibliography
- schema/emotion-node.schema.jsonJSON Schema (draft 2020-12) for nodes
- schema/relationship.schema.jsonJSON Schema for relationships