DUAL SYMBOLIC CLASSIFICATION AND THE PRIMARY EMOTIONS: A PROPOSED SYNTHESIS OF DURKHEIM'S SOCIOGENIC AND PLUTCHIK'S PSYCHOEVOLUTIONARY THEORIES OF EMOTIONS

Abstract

Durkheim's and Mauss's proposal that emotions play a causal role in the emergence of dual-symbolic classification schemes is evaluated by analysing two of their three case studies of dual classification - that of the Australian Aborigines and the `divinatory compass' of trigrams associated with the ancient Chinese text I Ching. Because Durkheim and Mauss attempted no classification of the emotions, their model remains conceptually underspecified and untested. Plutchik, in contrast, provides a psychoevolutionary classification of the emotions but does not provide for his `stimulus' social content. Through a theoretical synthesis of the sociogenic and psychoevolutionary perspectives of Durkheim and Plutchik, respectively, it is argued that a model sufficient for analysis of the classification-emotion linkage can be obtained and applied to two Durkheim-Mauss case studies. A study of Durkheim's Elementary Forms supporting his hypothesis that interaction rituals result in an effervescence of sentiment is explicated in terms of at least seven of Plutchik's eight primary emotions. The divinatory compass of eight trigrams is found to be structurally isomorphic to Plutchik's `wheel' of primary emotions.