How many basic emotions are there in a person? Must know...
There is some pretty good evidence that all humans experience (or express) the same basic group of around 6 - 8 emotions.
In response to the 'Anon' answer, I think that the term basic here is taken to mean that because they are experienced by everyone, they are a basic part of human nature, rather than being a comment on the experience or nature of the actual emotions themselves (which may well be complex when viewed in this way).
Plutchik has argued that there are 8 basic emotions - joy, trust, fear, surprise, sadness, disgust, anger and anticipation - and that more complex emotions are combinations of these (for example, optimism is a combination of anticipation and joy). His 'wheel of emotions' indicates how these basic emotions are related as opposites (joy v sadness, trust v disgust, fear v anger, surprise v anticipation) and also how they can be more or less strongly felt (e.g terror - fear - apprehension).
https://qph.ec.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-b54796a1938025c94437e06c9caf52e8-c
Plutchik's wheel of emotions, using different intensity of colour to indicate strength of feeling but also how the primary colours (basic emotions) can be mixed together to form different colours (more complex emotions).
Cross-cultural research into emotions has identified 6 or 7 basic emotions that are all expressed, facially, in the same way in all human populations so far studied. The 6 emotions are typically thought to be anger, fear, disgust, joy (or happiness) and sadness with the 7th being contempt.
So, according to this type of research, anyone should be able to tell what each of these people are feeling (or rather, what emotional state they are expressing):
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These 6 (or 7) emotions are typically expressed, facially, as follows:
https://qph.ec.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-cab603e2bda24ebacadaf9954b0026b0
https://qph.ec.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-36702deb3d2528c9646808213ef94471
https://qph.ec.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-7b4a21d4489a7e4dd85aa4cfa65e2f13
https://qph.ec.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-b327b12749bdc887a85e04afbc113ed3
https://qph.ec.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-5006657b1e2d81d1fbacc779446895cd
https://qph.ec.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-bb40a0caf99a432e5b9c57c6da5a4c02
https://qph.ec.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-5300174bfb7d9edadefcecf46776fd08
What the research has also found is that culture has an impact not in the way the emotions are expressed facially but in what causes the emotions to be expressed in the first place. In other words, different people and groups of people are disgusted, surprised, pleased, angered etc by different things but they will then (facially) express these emotions in the same consistent way.
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