Structure of The Indonesian Emotion Lexi

Asian Journal of Social Psychology (2001) 4: 201224
Structure of the Indonesian emotion lexicon

Phillip R. Shaver and Upekkha Murdaya
University of California, Davis
R. Chris Fraley
University of Illinois at Chicago
Based on a prototype approach to emotion concepts, two studies were

conducted: (1) to identify the mental state words that Indonesian speakers are
most certain name emotions (perasaan hati) and (2) to map the hierarchical and
family-resemblance structure of the top 124 emotion concepts. As in an earlier
study of emotion terms in American English (Shaver, Schwartz, Kirson, &
OConnor, 1987), cluster analysis of sorting data collected in Indonesia revealed
five basic-level emotion categories: cinta (love), senang (happiness), marah
(anger), kawatir/takut (anxiety/fear), and sedih (sadness). Also in line with the
American results, the five basic-level categories formed two large categories at
the superordinate level: positive emotions and negative emotions. Each of the
five basic-level categories contained several subordinate-level categories,
totaling 31 in all. The results suggest that the emotion lexicons, and
corresponding conceptualizations of the emotion domain, in Indonesia and the
U.S.A. are similar at the superordinate and basic levels but somewhat variable at
the subordinate level. This outcome like other kinds of psychological research
on emotions and emotion concepts suggests that the gross structure of
representations of the emotion domain are similar worldwide, perhaps for
biological reasons, but that different cultures make different fine-grained
distinctions and emphasize different subordinate-level emotion concepts.
Introduction
One of the most persistent and hotly contested issues in the study of emotion is the question
of cross-cultural similarities and differences in emotions, emotional expressions, and folk
(i.e., everyday) conceptions of emotion. Evidence has accumulated for cross-cultural
similarities in the facial expressions of certain emotions (e.g., Ekman, 1972, 1994; Izard,
1994), the dimensions underlying emotions (e.g., Russell, Lewicka, & Niit, 1989), the
representational scripts associated with particular emotions (e.g., Scherer & Wallbott, 1994),
and the ways in which the entire emotion domain is represented in everyday language (e.g.,
Shaver, Wu, & Schwartz, 1992). Evidence and arguments have also been advanced for
cross-cultural differences in emotions (e.g., Wierzbicka, 1999), emotional expressions and
display rules (e.g., Ekman, 1972; Friesen, 1972; Matsumoto, Kudoh, Scherer, & Wallbott,
Blackwell Publishers Ltd with the Asian Association of Social Psychology
and the Japanese Group Dynamics Association 2001
202 Phillip R. Shaver et al.
1988), and emotion concepts (e.g., Levy, 1973, 1984). It is of special interest here that
several philosophers and anthropologists have maintained that some cultures have no name
for, and thus no conception of, particular emotions recognized in other cultures (e.g., Harre,
1986; Lutz & White, 1986), that different cultures place different emphases on particular
emotions or kinds of emotion (e.g., Levy, 1984), and that different cultures have devised
different general conceptions of emotion (e.g., Lutz, 1988).
As the debate between universalists and relativists unfolds, it becomes increasingly clear
that there will never be a single, simple answer to the question of emotion universals versus
particularities. Wierzbicka (1999), for example, subtitled her recent book Diversity and
universals, acknowledging that there is evidence for both. Ekman (1972, 1992) calls his
approach neurocultural, acknowledging the simultaneous existence of biological
universals and cultural specifics, including culturally imposed display rules. What we
believe is needed now, more than restatements of general positions on one side of this long-
standing debate or the other, are individual studies relevant to the topic of cross-cultural
similarities and differences that help to refine the discussion of emotions and folk
conceptions of them. Ideally, these studies should probe relevant issues in many different
parts of the world and involve teams of investigators from different cultures (see e.g., Shaver
et al., 1992; Scherer & Wallbott, 1994), so that an increasingly diverse database and set of
interpretations of the data may be created. This article, which examines the conceptual
structure of the emotion domain in Indonesia, is meant to contribute to that effort.
The prototype approach to emotion concepts
The purpose of our research was to apply techniques developed by Shaver and his colleagues
(e.g., Shaver et al. 1987, 1992; based on work by Fehr & Russell, 1984; see also Russell,
1991) to the study of emotion terms in the Indonesian language, Bahasa Indonesia. The
theory behind these techniques, called the prototype approach to categorization, was
proposed by Rosch (1978; Rosch, Mervis, Gray, Johnson, & Boyes-Braem, 1976) in her
writings about fuzzy categories that is, categories for which there are no clear
classical definitions based on necessary and sufficient features. Despite their inherent
fuzziness, such categories may be roughly defined in terms of prototypes and central
features, and arranged according to conceptual levels, which Rosch (1978) called
superordinate, basic, and subordinate.
An example of a fuzzy superordinate category is furniture, which is difficult to define
using necessary and sufficient features. Within this category there are diverse kinds of items,
such as chairs, tables, beds, mirrors, and lamps, that share no particular physical features but
have in common the fact that all are used to furnish homes and are typically sold in furniture
stores. Within the fuzzy basic-level category chair, there are bean-bag chairs, kitchen chairs,
folding chairs, executive desk chairs, and so on. These also have no common physical
features but are all meant to be sat on.
Roschs research revealed that most everyday linguistic and cognitive distinctions are
made at the basic level of categorization (e.g., tables and chairs; cats and dogs), which is the
highest level at which categories have a single prototype a best or most typical
exemplar or a list of relatively central features. One can visualize a prototypical chair and
know what to do with it (i.e., how to use it or react to it), but one cannot visualize furniture
in a similarly concrete, unified, functional image. Furniture can be imagined only as a
collection of basic-level objects such as tables, lamps, beds, and chairs. (The same holds for
Indonesian emotion lexicon 203
the superordinate category animal, which includes basic-level categories like dog, cat, and
bird.) Thus, in terms of Roschs conception of category systems, furniture is a fuzzy
category at the superordinate level, chair is a fuzzy category at the basic level, and kitchen
chair is a fuzzy category at the subordinate level. Object categorization tends to be quickest
at the basic level, and children tend to learn words that designate basic-level object
categories first during language acquisition, perhaps partly because adults focus on the basic
level when talking with young children (Rosch, 1978; Rosch et al., 1976).
When Roschs (1978) approach is applied to the domain of emotions, with emotions
being conceptualized as psychological or behavioral objects or events that unfold in
regular, script-like (though variable and context-sensitive) ways within particular episodes
it becomes possible to think of their mental representations as event prototypes or scripts.
Just like other kinds of fuzzy categories, emotion categories may be arrayed hierarchically,
in terms of superordinate, basic, and subordinate levels. Theoretically, concepts at these
levels should function psychologically like the corresponding concepts in the domains of
furniture, animals, styles of painting, athletic games, and so on. People should tend to make
preliminary cuts of the emotion domain at the basic level, and children should learn
basic-level emotion concepts first during language acquisition. Preliminary evidence
suggests that both of these hypotheses are correct (Bretherton & Beeghley, 1982; Bretherton,
Fritz, Zahn-Waxler, & Ridgeway, 1986; Shaver et al., 1992).
Procedures used in the present studies
The techniques used by Shaver and his colleagues to elucidate the structure of the
conceptual domain of emotions in different cultures and languages include (1) determining
which mental-state nouns in a particular language are considered by native speakers to
designate emotions, and (2) determining how native speakers view the relations among the
emotions named by these nouns. (Noun, rather than adjective or verb, forms of emotion
words are used to increase the psychological similarity of emotions to objects in Roschs
studies, a feature of our work that may or may not be important.) The first part of this
procedure, namely selecting words that most native speakers agree are names of emotions, is
important because other approaches to lexical studies of emotion are likely to include odd
mixtures of emotions and non-emotions.1
The second part of our procedure is based on Roschs (1978) claim that objects or
entities in fuzzy categories bear what the philosopher Wittgenstein (1958) called family
resemblance to each other. That is, different kinds of love may all qualify as love, but not
because all share a single necessary and sufficient feature. Instead, they may share different
subsets of a larger list of features, just as do members of a family. When research
participants make decisions about which emotions belong in the same category, they may
use different criteria for different judgments. In recent years, controversy has developed
about whether peoples judgments in emotionname sorting studies are based on memories
of co-occurrence of particular emotions in personal experience or semantic knowledge about
the similarities and connectedness between pairs of named emotions. Schimmack and
Reisenzein (1997) presented evidence for the co-occurrence view. Feldman Barrett and
Fossum (2001) presented evidence for the semantic similarity position. In our opinion, both
bases for similarity/relatedness judgments are compatible with the idea that people possess
implicit prototypes or scripts representing the kinds of emotional events they have
experienced, witnessed, and heard or read about. There are presumably numerous ways
people can think about the relations between particular pairs or groups of emotions. What we
want to know is how these numerous ways do or do not map onto a common, though perhaps
implicit, conceptual hierarchy.
Cluster-analyzing the results of an emotionname sorting task is based on the
assumption that languages are likely to contain a family of terms that designate different
forms of biologically and culturally important emotions, and that family resemblances and
inter-family differences will cause these interrelated terms, on average (across many
participants), to form statistical clusters. The concepts that receive more discussion will
presumably have more words addressed to them (a process called hypercognition by Levy
(1973)). The ways in which the emotion subfamilies and families aggregate at higher and
higher levels of the resulting cluster diagram should reveal the implicit organization of the
sorters knowledge of the emotion domain.
Following this line of reasoning, Shaver et al. (1987) created a long list of potential
emotion names in English and had a group of college-aged research participants in the U.S.A.
rate them according to how prototypical each one was of the category emotion. Specifically,
participants rated how sure they were, on a 4-point scale, that each term named an emotion.
The top-rated 135 emotion terms were then typed onto cards, one emotion per card, and given
to a second group of participants, each of whom placed them into categories based on family
resemblance. The number and size of the categories were left to the participants discretion.
A hierarchical cluster analysis of the resulting co-occurrence matrix produced the structure
summarized verbally in Table 1. (The corresponding cluster diagram may be found in Shaver
et al. (1987).) There were two superordinate-level categories: hedonically positive and
hedonically negative emotions. Within the positive category, there were two major basic-
level categories: love and happiness. (There was also a very small surprise category which we
will ignore here.)2 Within the negative category, there were three basic-level categories:
anger, fear, and sadness. Within each of these basic-level categories, there were from two to
six subordinate-level categories, making a total of 24 subordinate categories in all.
A parallel study (Shaver et al., 1992) was subsequently conducted in Beijing, China, and
the results were similar in most respects to the American English results but different in
other respects. At the superordinate level there were again two categories: positive and
negative emotions. At the basic level, however, love was not a clearly separate basic-level
category in the superordinate positive emotion category. Instead, a few love-related words
(translated as liking, liking/love, love/admiration, and fascination) were embedded within a
large group of happiness-related words; they did not form a separate, distinct cluster. Within
the negative superordinate category, there were the familiar anger, fear, and sadness
categories at the basic level, along with two additional negatively toned categories: shame
and sad love (the latter containing words translated, for example, as unrequited love,
nostalgia, and sorrow/love). Thus, the results made it seem that the joy, anger, fear, and
sadness categories might be universal, but the composition and meaning of the love category
and the salience of the shame category might be cross-culturally variable. The purpose of the
studies reported here was to extend our explorations to another language, Indonesian, which
is a member of a third language family.
The Indonesian language
The Indonesian language, Bahasa Indonesia, is an interesting target domain for language-
based emotion research (Anwar, 1979). It grew out of Malay, an Austronesian language used
Table 1 The emotion hierarchy in English
Hierarchical levels
Superordinate Basic Subordinate
Positive Love (1) adoration, affection, love, fondness, liking, attraction, caring,
tenderness, compassion, sentimentality; (2) arousal, desire, lust, passion,
infatuation; (3) longing [3 groups; 16 terms; 12% of the total]
Positive Happiness (1) amusement, bliss, cheerfulness, gaiety, glee, jolliness, joviality, joy,
delight, enjoyment, gladness, happiness, jubilation, elation, satisfaction,
ecstacy, euphoria; (2) enthusiasm, zeal, zest, excitement, thrill,
exhilaration; (3) contentment, pleasure, pride, triumph; (4) eagerness,
hope, optimism; (5) enthrallment, rapture; (6) relief [6 groups; 33 terms;
25% of the total]
Negative Anger (1) aggravation, irritation, agitation, annoyance, grouchiness,
grumpiness; (2) exasperation, frustration; (3) anger, rage, outrage, fury,
wrath, hostility, ferocity, bitterness, hate, loathing, scorn, spite,
vengefulness, dislike, resentment; (4) disgust, revulsion, contempt; (5)
envy, jealousy; (6) torment [6 groups; 29 terms; 22% of the total]
Negative Fear (1) alarm, shock, fear, fright, horror, terror, panic, hysteria, mortification;
(2) anxiety, nervousness, tenseness, uneasiness, apprehension, worry,
distress, dread [2 groups; 17 terms; 13% of the total]
Negative Sadness (1) agony, suffering, hurt, anguish; (2) depression, despair, hopelessness,
gloom, glumness, sadness, unhappiness, grief, sorrow, woe, misery,
melancholy; (3) dismay, disappointment, displeasure; (4) guilt, shame,
regret, remorse, alienation, isolation, neglect, loneliness, rejection,
homesickness, defeat, rejection, insecurity, embarrassment, humiliation,
insult; (5) pity, sympathy, [5 groups; 37 terms; 28% of the total]
Source: Based on Shaver et al., 1987
for centuries across a wide portion of southeast Asia for business and trade. It was also
influenced by various local languages (especially Javanese), Arabic (because of the influence
of the Muslim religion), Dutch (because of hundreds of years of Dutch colonial rule),
Japanese (because of Japanese control during World War II), and English (because of its
worldwide cultural influence during the twentieth century). From the mid-1940s on, official
attempts were made to codify and simplify Malay for use in Indonesia, and to make it more
serviceable for a modern commercial and industrial society. Ever since that time it has been
the official language of Indonesia, even though many Indonesians also speak a local dialect.
Aims of the present studies
The emotion lexicon included within Bahasa Indonesia reflects the languages rich history.
Most of the words are of Malay origin, and many are shared with modern Malaysians, but a
few can be traced to Arabic, Dutch, Japanese, and English. It was thus of particular interest
to determine the underlying conceptual structure of the emotion domain represented by this
multifaceted language. In this article we report two studies designed, in accord with our

larger research program, (1) to determine which words (in particular, nouns) are considered
by Indonesian speakers to name emotions, and (2) to discover how such speakers view the
relations among the emotions named by these words. In particular, we wished to discover the
implicit hierarchy of fuzzy emotion concepts that lies behind Indonesian speakers intuitive
judgments about family resemblances among different emotions.
Our general expectations, based on previous studies using the same techniques in the
U.S.A. and China, were that (1) there would be two large superordinate categories that
distinguished hedonically positive from hedonically negative emotions; (2) there would be at
least one, and possibly two, basic-level categories within the positive superordinate
category, one for happiness and perhaps one for love; (3) there would be at least three basic-
level categories within the negative superordinate category: anger, fear, and sadness; and (4)
there would be multiple subordinate-level categories within each of the basic-level
categories, some of which would be recognizably similar to subordinate-level categories in
the corresponding English basic-level categories and some of which would not.3 These latter
subordinate-level categories were expected to require culture-specific interpretations.
Study 1
The purpose of Study 1 was to identify a large set of terms that Indonesian speakers could
agree are names of emotions (perasaan hati). Most other studies of the structure of emotion
lexicons in different languages have involved either a small set of investigator-selected
terms (e.g., Russell et al., 1989), a large set of terms determined partly by the investigators
theories (e.g., Clore, Ortony, & Foss, 1987; Ortony, Clore, & Foss, 1987), or a set of terms
generated by procedures other than asking native speakers which terms in their language are
names of emotions (e.g., Heider, 1991). Given the diversity of methods used to select the
emotion terms under study, it is not surprising that different investigators have reached
different conclusions about the structure of the emotion domain represented in various
languages. In our research, we wished to follow the procedures used by Shaver et al. (1987),
which included allowing speakers of the language in question to decide how certain they
were that candidate words actually named emotions. Our strategy was to have study
participants scrutinize a large list of candidate terms and narrow them down to the best pool
of words that could be sorted by participants in Study 2.
One potential problem with this procedure is that, according to Wierzbicka (1999), not
all languages have a word similar in function and meaning to emotion. So far in our
research this has not presented an insurmountable problem, because the concept emotion can
be named in English, Chinese, and Indonesian. A smaller problem in Indonesia is that there
are two ways to refer to the emotion category: perasaan hati and emosi. Although English
Indonesian dictionaries (e.g., Kamus Lengkap (Wojowasito & Wasito, 1982)) give both
terms as valid translations of the English word emotion, the native speakers we consulted
said that the better of the two, given the goals of Study 1, was perasaan hati, which literally
means feelings of the heart. The term emosi can refer either to emotions in general or,
more specifically, to negative emotions (as does the English phrase becoming emotional).
We did not want participants in Study 1 to focus only on how well a word represented the
superordinate category of negative emotions.
The appearance of the word hati (heart) in the primary term for emotion raises
another methodological issue. In their study of American English emotion terms, Shaver et
al. (1987) deleted words and phrases containing the word heart (e.g., heartbreak), fearing
that all heart words might be misleadingly sorted into a single heart category, even though
they named very different emotions. In Bahasa Indonesia, the proportion of emotion terms
containing the word hati, relative to other emotion words, is greater than the proportion of
heart words in English, so we decided not to exclude terms containing hati from Study
1. As will be seen in Study 2, this did not cause participants to group all terms containing the
word hati together.
Method
Participants. One hundred, mostly college-educated, adult employees of CCM Group, an
Indonesian holding company that manages manufacturing and distribution companies,
voluntarily participated in the prototypicality rating phase of the study. There were 31 men
and 69 women, varying in age from 23 to 50. All used Indonesian as their primary language.
(Many also spoke Javanese or other Indonesian dialects and knew English to varying
degrees necessary for their work.)
Procedure. A list of 404 emotion names, to be rated for prototypicality (i.e., typicality as
examples of emotion) was compiled in the following way. A native speaker of Indonesian
(UM) combed through the two standard IndonesianEnglish dictionaries used in Indonesia,
Kamus Lengkap (Wojowasito & Wasito, 1982) and Kamus Indonesia Inggris (Echols &
Shadily, 1989).4 She liberally chose words that might conceivably be considered by at least
some Indonesian speakers to be names of emotions and that seemed to fit with Oatley and
Jenkins (1996, p. 96) very general three-part definition of emotion, which may be
summarized as follows: (1) It is caused by conscious or unconscious evaluation of an event
as relevant to a concern or goal; it is felt as positive when a goal is advanced and as negative
when a goal is impeded; (2) it consists of action readiness and the prompting of plans, gives
priority and a sense of urgency to one or a few kinds of action, and thus interrupts or
competes with other mental processes and actions; (3) it is usually experienced as a
distinctive type of mental state, sometimes accompanied or followed by bodily changes,
expressions, and actions.
Two other native Indonesian speakers, both with college degrees, looked through the
resulting list and eliminated any words they were sure would not be considered emotions in
Indonesia and added a few emotion words that were missed in the dictionary searches. In
general, the aim was to be very broadly inclusive, because words that were not considered
by most Indonesian speakers to be emotion names could be eliminated based on the ratings
collected in Study 1.
Participants rated each of the 402 mental and behavioral state names, listed in
alphabetical order, on a 4-point scale ranging from 0, Saya yakin sekali kata ini tidak
menunjukkan perasaan hati [I am very sure that this word does not name an emotion] to 3,
Saya yakin sekali kata ini menunjukkan perasaan hati [I am very sure that this word does
name an emotion]. They were also given the option of saying they were not sure they knew
what the word meant. Among the words actually used in Study 2, none were unfamiliar to
more than 16% of the participants, so all were retained. Mean prototypicality ratings were
used to select the 124 best examples of the emotion domain (all words with average ratings
of 1.9 or above). This cut-off was chosen to sample the domain extensively without
burdening participants with an unmanageable number of terms to sort, and to approximate
the number of words used by Shaver et al. (1987) in the U.S.A. (N = 135) and by Shaver et
al. (1992) in China (N = 110).
Results and discussion
The final 124 words, along with their mean prototypicality ratings and brief English
translations, are shown in Table 2. The next 76 words are provided for comparison in an
endnote.5 All of the words and their ratings are available from the authors on request. The
definitions in Table 2 were taken from the two dictionaries cited earlier and modified in
some cases based on Indonesian consultants judgments about contemporary usage.
The words with the ten highest prototypicality ratings were bahagia (happiness, well-
being), cinta (love, affection), cemburu (jealousy, envy, dissatisfaction), gembira (gaiety,
happiness), sayang (caring, love), bangga (rightfully, proud of), rindu (yearning,
homesickness), benci (hatred, extreme dislike, animosity), girang (elation, glee, delight),
kasihan (pity, merciful compassion). For purposes of comparison, the most prototypical
emotions in the American English study (Shaver et al., 1987) were love, anger, hate,
depression, fear, jealousy, happiness, passion, affection, and sadness. The two lists are
similar in containing words related to happiness, love, hatred, and jealousy. They differ
somewhat in the implied degree of sociality versus individualism in key emotion terms, as
might be expected based on Lutzs (1988) study of the Ifaluk language, a Micronesian
language that is presumably more similar to Malay and Indonesian than to English.
Somewhat more of the Indonesian terms seem to refer to emotions in social contexts.
In the Indonesian results, there were no anger-related terms among the top ten except for
cemburu and benci, at least one of which (cemburu; envy, jealousy) inherently refers to a
social context. The only hint of sadness in the top ten Indonesian terms is rindu yearning,
homesickness which was not viewed as closely akin to sadness. (As will be shown in Study
2, rindu is grouped by most Indonesians with words related to love rather than sadness.)
Also, there is no fear-related word among the ten most prototypical Indonesian emotion
names. Finally, compassion (kasihan) appeared in the list of ten most prototypical words in
Indonesia but not in the U.S.A. (where it ranked seventeenth).
The Indonesian results are similar to findings reported by K. D. Smith and Tkel-Sbal
(1995) from a study of Palau, another Micronesian language more related to Malay and
Indonesian than to English. Smith and Tkel-Sbal asked their research participants to freely
list emotions (rather than rate terms provided for them, as in our study), and chubchub el
reng (compassionate heart) received the fifth highest number of mentions, whereas fear
appeared in twentieth position. The first appearance of an anger-related term was
klsiberreng, which according to the authors means mutual hurt feelings; mutual anger,
clearly a socially contextualized form of anger. In contrast, a parallel study of Turkish
emotion concepts conducted by S. T. Smith and K. D. Smith (1995) revealed that korku
(fear) was listed more often than any other emotion (by 169 out of 200 participants), whereas
merhamet (mercy, compassion, pity) was near the bottom of the list, having been mentioned
by only two participants. Thus, there may be something distinctive about the pervasive
emphasis on social relations in Austronesian and Micronesian languages.
Although the apparently social nature of Indonesian emotions is worthy of further study,
we should note that love, which is clearly a social emotion, was one of the most prototypical
emotions in all of the studies mentioned above. In our Study 1, cinta (love, affection) and
sayang (caring, love) were among the ten most prototypical emotions; in the American
study, love, passion, and affection; in the Palau study, beltik el reng (love, fondness); in the
Turkish study, ask (love, passion) and sevgi (love, affection). Thus, it would be a mistake to
view any of the languages, or associated cultures, as having a generally individualistic or
nonsocial conception of emotion.
Table 2 Mean prototypicality ratings, unfamilarity percentages (UP), and English translations
for the 124 most prototypical Indonesian emotion names
Emotion
word M UP English definition
bahagia 2.78 2 happiness, well-being

cinta 2.71 0 love, affection
cemburu 2.69 0 jealousy, envy, dissatisfaction
gembira 2.62 0 gaiety, happiness, cheerfulness, bounciness, enthusiasm
sayang 2.56 0 caring, love (also a term of endearment: sweetie, darling)
bangga 2.53 0 feeling rightfully, proud of
rindu 2.52 0 yearning, homesickness
benci 2.50 0 hatred, extreme dislike, animosity
girang 2.50 0 elation, glee, delighted
kasihan 2.49 0 pity, merciful compassion
haru 2.47 0 feeling affected, moved, touched, emotional
sedih 2.47 0 sadness, distress, sorrow, misery
ceria 2.46 0 cheerfulness, brightness, purity
senang 2.46 0 happiness, contentment, liking
duka 2.45 0 grief, sorrow, misery
sakit hati 2.45 0 pain (literally: hurt heart), displeasure, bitterness
iba 2.44 2 compassion, pity; feeling moved, touched
kangen 2.44 0 confusion, disturbance, inner chaos
dendam 2.43 0 vengeance, bearing a grudge, animosity, rancor
kawatir 2.43 1 fear, apprehension, worry
riang 2.42 0 hilarity, gleefulness, dizziness
dukacita 2.40 1 profound sorrow, heartache, grief
patah hati 2.40 0 feeling discouraged, heartbroken
marah 2.39 0 wrath, anger, ire, fury
berbesar 2.36 0 feeling expanded with pride
bimbang 2.36 0 worry, hesitation, vacillation, indecision
sukacita 2.36 0 happiness, joy, merriment
damai 2.35 0 peacefulness, tranquility
risau 2.35 0 restlessness, nervousness, worry
dengki 2.33 0 envy, spite
cemas 2.33 0 worry; feeling disturbed, anxious
terkesiap 2.33 11 being startled, captivated; having ones attention grabbed
berat hati 2.32 0 sadness (literally, heavy-heartedness)
gelisah 2.32 1 nervousness, restlessness, uneasiness, worry, concern
ikhlas 2.30 0 sincere devotion, complete conviction, full preparedness
sukaria 2.30 0 happiness, pleasure, delight, celebration
jengkel 2.29 1 vexation, annoyance, irritation
bergaira 2.28 1 passion, arousal, enthusiasm
besar hati 2.28 1 pride, elation
kasih 2.27 0 affection, love, compassion
terpikat 2.27 1 feeling charmed; attraction, fascination
dongkol 2.25 0 resentment, acrimony; feeling irked, vexed
asmara 2.24 1 romantic love
berang 2.23 4 anger, fury, ire
emosi 2.23 0 negative emotion, feeling seized by emotion
gairah 2.23 0 passion, strong desire

Table 2 Continued
Emotion
kesal 2.23 0 feeling peeved, fed up, piqued, cross

kagum 2.22 0 amazed admiration, respect
pilu 2.22 0 sadness, heartache, compassion
suka 2.22 0 liking, fondness for, enjoyment
tersingung 2.22 1 feeling offended, bitter
galau 2.21 6 confusion, upset
putus asa 2.20 0 hopelessness, being dispirited, disconsolation
pedih hati 2.17 1 mortification, grief, pain (literally: stinging, smarting heart)
kepuasan 2.16 0 satisfaction, contentment
mangkel 2.16 1 annoyance, irritation
gusar 2.15 4 anxiety, restlessness, agitation, upset
keharuan 2.15 1 feeling moved emotionally, affected, touched
iri 2.14 1 envious resentment
sendu 2.14 2 sadness, dejection, melancholy
demen 2.13 5 liking, fondness for
kecemasan 2.12 0 anxiety, worry, concern, apprehension
sebal 2.11 1 resentment, vexation
terangsang 2.11 1 excitement, stimulation, arousal, titillation
terpesona 2.11 1 feeling spell-bound, enchanted
bingung 2.10 0 confusion; feeling panicky, perplexed, disoriented
frustrasi 2.10 0 feeling blocked, frustration
malu 2.10 0 shame, disgrace, mortification
naik pitam 2.10 2 becoming enraged, having a fit
simpati 2.10 0 sympathy
kemesraan 2.09 1 intimacy, absorption, love
mesra 2.09 0 feeling intimately fused, very close
berdebar 2.08 2 heart palpitation, heart flutter
gemas 2.08 3 annoyance, irritation (held back)
kecil hati 2.08 0 hurt, grief, faint-heartedness, discouragement
putus harapan 2.08 0 hopelessness, despondency, despair
remuk hati 2.07 1 feeling crushed, broken-hearted
takut 2.07 0 fear, apprehension, dread
terbuai 2.07 1 blissful oblivion, rapture
berani 2.06 0 boldness, courageousness
kalut 2.06 1 confusion, disturbance, inner chaos
lega 2.06 2 relaxation, relief
tulus 2.05 0 honesty, openness, sincerity, straightforwardness
murka 2.04 0 anger, fury, feeling incensed
hasrat 2.03 1 ardor, passion, longing, desire
histeris 2.03 1 feeling hysterically upset
curiga 2.02 0 suspicion, distrust
muak 2.02 2 loathing, revulsion, repugnance
naik darah 2.02 1 rising anger, becoming hot-headed
murung 2.01 0 melancholy, depression, gloom
yakin 2.01 0 certainty, conviction, confidence
berdengki 2.00 4 hatred, envy
getar hati 2.00 2 feeling moved (in the heart)

Table 2 Continued
Emotion
jenuh 2.00 1 feeling surfeited, fed up, sick and tired

penyesalan 2.00 1 sorrow, regret, remorse
puas 2.00 0 satisfaction, complacency
tertarik 2.00 1 attraction, interest
waswas 2.00 0 doubt, anxiety, suspicion, wariness
asik 1.99 8 absorption, fascination, excitement
bosan 1.99 0 boredom; feeling tired of, sick of
gundah 1.99 5 anxiety, restlessness
kalap 1.99 2 beside oneself with anger, possessed, bewitched
rendah hati 1.99 0 humility, modesty
berahi 1.98 5 sexual desire, lust, infatuation
panas hati 1.98 0 edginess; quickness to anger, envy, or jealousy
perasaan 1.98 0 feeling, sentiment
tenteram 1.98 1 feeling settled, quieted, reassured
tinggi hati 1.98 1 conceit, arrogance
geram 1.97 1 being infuriated, enraged (growling)
sabar 1.97 0 patience, patient persistence, tolerance, calmness
ngambek 1.96 0 pouting, anger, sulkiness
ingin 1.94 1 desire, longing
tabah 1.94 0 determination, persistence, steadfastness
aman 1.93 3 calmness, safety, security
gentar 1.93 2 fearful trembling
gregetan 1.93 3 feeling tense from restraining pent-up emotions
tersentuh 1.92 1 feeling touched, moved
edan kesmaran 1.91 9 being madly in love, infatuated, smitten
kepingin 1.91 0 desire, eagerness for
senewen 1.91 0 nervousness, having a nervous fit
sesal 1.91 0 regret, remorse, sorrow, repentance
kebat-kebit 1.90 16 nervousness, restlessness, agitation
prihatin 1.90 0 concern, apprehension
setia 1.90 0 loyalty, faithfulness, satisfaction, solidarity
Study 2
In Study 2, a second group of Indonesian participants sorted the 124 terms listed in Table 2
into similarity-based categories. The resulting co-occurrence matrices were then submitted
to hierarchical cluster analysis to reveal the best candidates for superordinate-, basic-, and
subordinate-level status in Bahasa Indonesia.
Method
Participants. One hundred and eight students from two leading Indonesian universities,
none of whom had participated in Study 1, took part in Study 2. Sixty-five of them (39 men,
26 women) attended the University of Indonesia; 43 (8 men, 35 women) attended Atmajaya
University. They ranged in age from 13 to 35, with a mean age of 23.91 years (SD = 4.85).

Each person completed the sorting task individually and was paid the approximate
Indonesian equivalent of U.S.$10 Ninety-three of the 108 participants listed Bahasa
Indonesia, the language in which our two studies were conducted, as their first language. Of
the remaining 15, 12 listed Javanese as their first language, two listed Sudanese, and one
neglected to return the brief questionnaire asking about languages. Javanese and Sudanese
are the most widely spoken Indonesian dialects. All of the participants were highly fluent in
Bahasa Indonesia.
Procedure. Each of the 124 terms listed and defined in Table 2 (plus four duplicates,
explained below) were printed on small white cards, and the cards were presented to the
participants with the following written instructions (here translated into English with what
were separate paragraphs in the original marked by parenthesized numbers to save space):6
Instructions: (1) The purpose of this research is to study human emotions. More specifically, we
would like to know the kinds of emotions that people perceive as being similar (falling into one
group or category) and the ones they perceive as being different (falling into different groups or
categories). We have prepared 128 cards with the names of different emotions printed on each of
them. (2) We would like you to group these cards according to your ideas about which emotions
are similar or different. There is no one correct way to sort these cards. You may create as many
or as few categories as you wish. (3) In each category, you may put as many or as few cards as
you think best. Our suggestion is to spread the cards on a table, and then separate them into
categories as you see fit. You may arrange and rearrange your categories until you are satisfied
with all of your choices. Think carefully about which words fit best in each category. (4) After
you have finished sorting the cards into categories, please staple each pile together, so that we
can tell which ones belong in each category. Then, please put all of the stapled piles into the
envelope provided, alongside the questionnaire that asks for background information. Seal the
envelope and return it to your professor to receive payment of Rp.10,000. (5) Thank you very
much for your help with this study!
The cards and instructions were handed to each participant in an envelope, and he or she
took the materials home and completed them when convenient, without a time limit.
Because no limit was placed on either the number of categories or the number of terms in
each category, these parameters varied widely across participants (as they did in the parallel
American study; Shaver et al., 1987). One Indonesian participant separated all 124 words
into five categories, another into 64 categories (M = 20.07, SD = 11.58). The mean level of
differentiation, 20 categories, suggests that the average person in the sample divides the
emotion domain into 20 or so subordinate-level concepts. Some make many fewer
distinctions (essentially the ones between the five basic-level categories described below);
some presumably the most cognitively sophisticated in this knowledge domain
distinguish many more kinds of emotions.7
Because the sorting task was completed at home, in participants own time, we included
four duplicate terms (without mentioning them in the instructions), chosen at random and
mixed among the 124 unique cards, to provide a check on the degree of care participants
took in working through the cards. In all four cases, the duplicate pair members were placed
in the same category by 105 or more of the 108 participants. This fact, as well as the clearly
interpretable pattern of results, suggests that participants took the task seriously.

Results and discussion
We constructed a 124 124 co-occurrence matrix for every participant, with 1 indicating
that a particular pair of terms was placed in the same category and 0 indicating that the
members of the pair were placed in different categories. The resulting 108 matrices (from
108 study participants) were aggregated to form a single 124 124 matrix in which cell
entries could range from 0 to 108, indicating the number of participants who placed a
particular pair of words into the same category. For the purpose of clustering, we
transformed this matrix into a distance or dissimilarity matrix by subtracting the constant
108 from each entry. We then submitted the dissimilarity matrix to a hierarchical cluster
analysis using the hclust programs average distance option (Everitt, 1980; Hartigan, 1981)
in S-Plus 2000 (MathSoft, 1999). This is the same method used in previous studies by our
research group. The results are shown in Figure 1 and summarized verbally in Table 3.
The clusters that we will interpret as representing subordinate-level categories of
emotions appear in the lower regions of the figure. Several are fairly large, because we
terminated the diagram at a cluster score of 60 (see the scale running along the left side of
the hierarchy diagram). This is similar to the level used by Shaver et al. (1987). If we had
included the entire diagram, it would have been difficult to present efficiently, and would
have shown only that there are small but meaningful distinctions even within some of the
subordinate-level categories.8
Somewhat isolated emotion terms
For the sake of simplicity, in the verbal summaries presented in Table 4 we have folded all
single-word categories into the largest of the multi-word categories at the next level down
in the diagram, a procedure also followed by Shaver et al. (1987). For readers who wish to
think carefully about these special terms, they are easy to locate in Figure 1: terkesiap,
perasaan, getar hati, setia, histeris, tinggi hati, senewen, kalut, gusar, sakit hati, and berat
hati. These terms seem to be somewhat separated from other nearby terms in the diagram for
one of three reasons: (1) Some (e.g., perasaan, getar hati, histeris) are more general than
most of the emotion names used in the study. Perasaan, as noted earlier, means feelings or
sentiments, and is a rather abstract term. Getar hati means feeling moved (in the heart) and
is often associated with love, although a person can be moved in other ways as well. Histeris
refers to being hysterically upset, and is used more often in connection with angry feelings
than to refer, say, to hysterical fear or laughter (two common uses of the term hysterical
in English), but histeris need not imply anger. (2) Some of the other isolated words may
have generated disagreement among study participants because they bridge two categories
or are used in different ways in different contexts. Terkesiap, for example, has the dictionary
definition startle, but is clustered with attraction/enchantment emotions in the love
category. Our Indonesian consultants said that this probably happened because the word is
often used to refer to a state in which ones attention is quickly captured by an exciting or
compelling sight, such as an attractive person of the opposite sex. (3) Some of the words
may not correspond closely with members of their best-neighbor category because they have
a specific meaning for which there are no synonyms or emotions with high family
resemblance. Tinggi hati, for example, means conceit or arrogance. It does not fit well with
berbesar and besar hati, which are more morally acceptable forms of pride, but neither does
it fit closely with berdengki (hatred, envy) and iri (envious resentment), its nearest relatives
Figure 1 Results of a hierarchical cluster analysis of 124 Indonesian emotion terms, Study 2.
The two small squares near the top mark the branching points for positive and negative emotions
(the superordinate categories); the five small circles at the next level down indicate branching
points for the five basic-level emotion categories: cinta (love), senang (happiness), marah
(anger), kawatir/takut (anxiety/fear), and sedih (sadness).

Table 3 The emotion hierarchy in Indonesian
Hierarchical levels
Superordinate Basic Subordinate
Positive cinta (1: nonsexual desire) ingin, kepingin; (2: sexual desire/arousal)
(love) hasrat, berahi, terangsang, bergaira, gairah; (3: liking, fondness)
demen, suka; (4: attraction, enchantment) terkesiap, terbuai,
terpesona, terpikat, tertarik; (5: love) perassan, getar hati, setia, edan,
kesmaran, kangen, rindu, kemesraan, asmara, mesra, cinta, kasih,
sayang [5 groups; 26 terms; 21% of the total]
Positive senang (1: respect, admiration) bangga, kagum; (2: happiness, joy) asik,
(happiness) sukacita, sukaria, bahagia, senang, girang, gembira, ceria, riang; (3:
calmness, security) damai, aman, tenteram; (4: satisfaction,
contentment) lega, kepuasan, puas; (5: boldness, confidence) berani,
yakin; (6: feeling good about right actions) ikhlas, tulus; (7: justified
pride) berbesar, besar hati; (8: quiet, mature confidence) rendah hati,
sabar, tabah [8 groups; 26 terms; 21% of the total]
Negative marah (1: angry boredom, feeling fed up) bosan, jenuh; (2: jealous distrust)
(anger) cemburu, curiga; (3: envy, resentment) tinggi hati, iri, berdengki,
dengki; (4: pent-up anger) gemas, gregetan; (5: bitterness) ngambek,
tersingung; (6: hatred, loathing) muak, benci, dendam; (7: anger,
vexation) histeris, senewen, emosi, kesal, sebal, mangkel, dongkol,
jengkel, panas hati, kalap, murka, naik darah, naik pitam, marah,
berang, geram [7 groups; 31 terms; 25% of the total]
Negative takut (1: fear, trembling) gentar, takut; (2: nervousness, restlessness)
(fear) berdebar, kebat-kebit; (3: anxiety, worry, confusion) kalut, gusar,
kecemasaan, cemas, kawatir, waswas, bimbang, bingung, galau,
gundah, gelisah, risau [3 groups; 16 terms; 13% of the total]
Negative sedih (1: hurt, shame) kecil hati, malu; (2: sympathy) simpati, tersentu; (3:
(sadness) feeling moved, touched) hard, keharuan; (4: pity, compassion)
prihatin, iba, kasihan; (5: sadness, grief) murung, pilu, sendu, sedih,
duka, dukacita; (6: crushed, broken-hearted) sakit hati, pedih hati,
patah hati, remuk hati; (7: hopelessness, despair) frustrasi, putus asa,
putus harapan; (8: regret, remorse) berat hati, penyesal, sesal, [8
groups; 25 terms; 20% of the total]
in the cluster diagram. It may have ended up adjacent to envy terms because a person who
experiences tinggi hati is likely to be competitive, concerned that someone else is getting
more goods or attention than himself, and so on.
These special cases deserve careful consideration in future studies. Of more interest here
are the 113 emotion terms that did not stand alone in the cluster diagram shown in Figure 1.
Evaluation of the hypotheses
Inspection of the figure as a whole reveals support for all of our expectations. As in the
American English emotion hierarchy described by Shaver et al. (1987), in the Indonesian
hierarchy there are two large categories at the superordinate level (hanging from high
branches marked with squares in Figure 1), containing positive and negative emotion
terms, respectively. The positive superordinate category contains two large basic-level
categories (hanging from branches marked with circles in Figure 1), cinta (love) and
bahagia or senang (happiness). (Choices among Indonesian names for the various categories
are discussed below; see Category names.) The negative superordinate category contains
two large subcategories, one of which quickly splits into two. Examination of the contents of
the three large categories (hanging from branches marked with circles in Figure 1) indicates
that they parallel the American English anger, fear, and sadness categories. In the Shaver et
al. (1987) study, fear and sadness were also part of a single negative category distinguished
from anger, but that category quickly split into two distinct groups at the next level. We
therefore consider the Indonesian results, like the American results, to indicate that there are
three large negative categories at the basic level level: marah (anger), kawatir/takut
(anxiety/fear), and sedih (sadness).
As expected, at the next level down the cognitively subordinate level there are
several categories that seem to closely parallel some of the American English subcategories.
For example, within the Indonesian love category there are subcategories concerned with
sexual desire/arousal and affection/liking/fondness, which were also subcategories of love in
the American study. The Indonesian love category, however, is more differentiated than the
American love category. It contains 26 terms, which is 21% of all the terms included in the
study. The American love category contained only 16 terms, 12% of the total. The
Indonesian happiness category (containing 26 terms, 21% of the total) contains a central,
large joy subcategory, which is also true of the American happiness category (containing 33
terms, 25% of the total). Both languages have subcategories related to satisfaction and
contentment. But American English seems at least a bit more focused on enthusiasm/zeal/
zest and on eagerness/ hope/optimism. (Cf. Wierzbickas (1999) discussion of the American
emphasis on enthusiasm, eagerness, and optimism.) Indonesian, in addition to having a
subcategory focusing on gaiety and enthusiasm (the second subordinate category in the
senang/happiness section of Table 3), also contains subcategories dealing with respect,
admiration; calmness, security; feeling good about honesty and right actions; and quiet,
mature confidence. Thus, happiness may mean somewhat different things in the U.S.A. and
Indonesia another promising topic for future research.
The anger categories in the two languages seem fairly similar in size, differentiation, and
structure at the subordinate level, although some subordinate-level concepts are packaged a
little differently. Whether or not these small differences are reliable and meaningful needs to
be determined in future studies. The issues of jealousy, envy, hatred, loathing, bitterness, and
exasperation (being fed up; experiencing pent-up anger) are covered in both languages.
Interestingly, to the extent that loathing and disgust appear in either emotion hierarchy at all,
they appear within the anger category in both languages. This is quite different from systems
of basic emotions based on facial expressions (e.g., Ekman, 1992; Izard, 1991), which
consider disgust to be an important emotion because of its distinctive, developmentally
precocious facial expression. In both the U.S.A. and Indonesia, saying that one is
disgusted or fed up (both terms having obvious metaphorical connections with literal
distaste, nausea, and vomiting) usually means that one is frustrated and angry about
something (usually another person or a group). Rozin and his associates (e.g., Rozin, Haidt,
& McCauley, 1993) have done a good job of explicating the ways in which the literal
meaning of disgust gets transformed, developmentally and culturally, into a more figurative
meaning. Our results suggest that the figurative meaning is generally conceptualized as a
form of anger, which may be why cross-cultural rating studies often turn up confusions
between what are supposed to be distinguishable disgust and anger facial expressions
(Russell, 1994).
The fear categories in Indonesia and the U.S.A. also seem similar in some ways and
different in others. Fear constitutes the smallest of the five major categories in both the
Indonesian and English hierarchies. In both cases, the fear category contains only two or three
subordinate-level subgroups. In both languages, a distinction is drawn between anxiety and
fear. The major difference is that the Indonesian language places greater emphasis on being
anxious, apprehensive, confused, disoriented, and indecisive (kawatir, kalut, kangen, bingung,
galau). As explained in the following section, this difference affects the empirically derived
name of the cluster, which we have decided to call kawatir/takut, or anxiety/fear.
Finally, the sadness categories in the two languages seem very similar. Both include
terms meaning hurt, shame, sympathy, pity, grief, regret, and remorse. The dearth of shame
words in Bahasa Indonesia (among the 124 words we studied, malu shame, disgrace,
mortification is the only one that qualifies) makes it a very different language from
Mandarin Chinese, which contains a sizable basic-level shame category (Shaver et al.,
1992). This is another promising topic for further research, because informal observations of
Indonesian social life suggest that shame is an important issue, although perhaps not for the
same reasons as in China. It will be interesting to find out why this emphasis is not reflected
in a complex family of shame-related emotion terms.
Category names
In the paragraphs immediately above, we have used particular Indonesian terms to label the
basic-level categories corresponding to love, happiness, anger, fear, and sadness in the U.S.
study (Shaver et al., 1987). These terms are mainly the ones suggested by our Indonesian
consultants, but we also took an empirical approach to naming the clusters, and the results are
worth considering. For every term in each of the five major clusters, we computed the
average number of co-occurrences with other members of its cluster as well as the average
number of co-occurrences with non-category members. The second number was then
subtracted from the first, and the category members were arranged in terms of their category
centrality, or prototypicality. The top five terms in each of the five lists are shown in Table 4.
In four of the five cases, the category names we chose with the help of Indonesian
consultants appeared among the top five terms in their basic-level category, and all five
terms had similar relative co-occurrence scores, suggesting that the order among those terms
was fairly arbitrary. In what we called the cinta (love) category, cinta was in second place
behind asmara, a more specifically romantic form of love. The pre-eminence of asmara is
attributable to the many romantic love words in the Indonesian love category, most of which
co-occurred highly with asmara. In the senang (happiness) category, senang was in fifth
place according to the co-occurrence scores. Although the terms that preceded it on the list
are also good names for happiness, senang is broader and is more commonly used to name
the category in everyday Indonesian speech. In the marah (anger) category, marah was fifth
on the centrality list. Our rationale for using it as the category name is the same as for
senang. In the sedih (sadness) category, sedih came in second but is more general than duka,
the term with the highest centrality score.
The most challenging category for us to name was the one we ended up labeling kawatir/
takut. The word kawatir (fear, apprehension, worry) is the most prototypical member of the
Table 4 The five most central (prototypical) words in each of the basic-level emotion
categories
Basic-level Indonesian
category word English translation
cinta (love) asmara romantic love

cinta love, affection
mesra feeling intimately fused, very close
edan kesmaran being madly in love, infatuated, smitten
sayang caring, love (and a term of endearment: baby, sweetie, darling)
senang (happiness) ceria cheerfulness, brightness
gembira gaiety, happiness, cheerfulness, bounciness, enthusiasm
riang hilarity, gleefulness, dizziness
bahagia happiness, well-being
senang happiness, contentment, liking
marah (anger) berang anger, fury, ire
geram fury, passion (growling)
naik darah rising anger, becoming hot-headed
naik pitam becoming enraged, having a fit
marah wrath, anger, ire, fury
kawatir/takut kawatir fear, apprehension, worry
(anxiety/fear) waswas doubt, anxiety, suspicion, wariness
risau restlessness, nervousness, worry
kecemasan anxiety, worry, concern, apprehension
galau confusion, upset
sedih (sadness) duka grief, sorrow, misery
sedih sadness, distress, sorrow, misery
dukacita profound sorrow, heartache, grief
pilu sadness, heartache, compassion
sendu sadness, dejection, melancholy
category, and the other four highly central words have related meanings, which focus more
on anxiety or apprehension than on fear. The word takut, which is the everyday word for fear
in Indonesia, is not even close to being among the top five terms based on relative co-
occurrence scores, because so many members of the category have something to do with
anxiety or apprehension rather than strong fear. Our consultants assured us that this does not
mean that Indonesian people do not experience or talk about fear in the American sense, but
when they do talk about it they tend to use the word takut along with an adjectival or
adverbial modifier indicating degree. (In contrast, English has words like terror, horror, and
fright; Shaver et al., 1987.) Even if the consultants comments about takut are correct,
however, we are left wondering why there are so many Indonesian words for anxiety/
apprehension/confusion. This would be a good topic for future studies using more
ethnographic or linguistic methods.
We decided, for our purposes, to retain the word takut as a secondary name for the
kawatir category, because takut is probably the word that translators of American
psychological research on emotions would use. But this does not mean that we wish to
ignore the intriguing Indonesian emphasis on anxiety.
Discussion
At the superordinate and basic levels, the Indonesian emotion hierarchy is remarkably similar
to the American hierarchy described by Shaver et al. (1987). In both cases, there are five
large basic-emotion categories; in both cases, love and happiness form a positive emotion
category at the superordinate level, and anger, fear (or anxiety/fear), and sadness form a
negative emotion category at the same level. At the subordinate level there are some
differences. A few may be due to fairly trivial, and not completely replicable, differences in
the specific contents of some of the categories. Others seem more likely to reflect genuine
differences in emphasis due to cultural differences. The conception of happiness in Indonesia
seems more suffused with moral ideals and spiritual feelings than the more secular, self-
oriented, enthusiastic, and upbeat conception of happiness in the U.S.A. This should not be
overemphasized without further study, however, because one of the central Indonesian terms
for happiness was gembira, which means something like gaiety, happiness, cheerfulness,
bounciness, enthusiasm not a bad approximation of Wierzbickas (1999) characterization of
what is supposedly distinctive about American cheeriness. The Indonesian conception of love
may place more emphasis on yearning and desire than the American conception, perhaps
because the barriers to consummation are more formidable in Indonesia, which is a more
traditional and mostly Muslim country.9 These issues should be pursued in future studies,
perhaps focusing on the detailed internal structure of particular basic-emotion categories.
General discussion
The Indonesian and American results are quite similar, there being two superordinate
categories positive and negative emotions and five basic-level categories: love and
happiness, in the positive category, and anger, sadness, and fear, in the negative category.
Why might these five emotions emerge universally as cognitively basic emotions?
The distinction between happiness and sadness corresponds to a fundamental issue
mentioned in nearly every contemporary analysis of emotion: emotions depend on a person
getting or not getting what he or she wants (or, sometimes, getting or not getting what he or
she does not want) (see Oatley & Jenkins (1996) for a review). Wierzbicka (1999) includes
wanting and having, or getting, as components of a universal human semantics. In the
psychology of learning, social exchange, and behavior management (e.g., Kelley & Thibaut,
1978; Skinner, 1953), the distinctions between approach and avoidance, reward and
punishment, and positive and negative reinforcement are fundamental, just as they are in
physiological psychology (e.g., Davidson & Irwin, 1999; Panksepp, 1998). In the words of a
leading textbook (Westen, 1996): Positive reinforcement occurs because a consequence
feels good, negative reinforcement occurs because termination of an unpleasant event feels
better, and punishment occurs because a consequence feels bad (p. 233).
The fearanger distinction corresponds to the well-known difference between fighting
and fleeing (or freezing) in response to dangers and threats, another matter of great adaptive
significance. From Cannon (1932) to the present (e.g., Panksepp, 1998), this distinction has
been traced by physiological psychologists to particular pathways in the brain. The fight
flight distinction, like the happinesssadness distinction, is a fundamental product of
biological evolution which would be difficult for people in any culture to overlook.
Love has been mentioned much less often than happiness, sadness, fear, and anger in
lists of biologically basic emotions (Shaver, Morgan, & Wu, 1996), but clearly, sexual
mating, reproduction, parenting, and maintaining relationships with kin and reciprocally
altruistic relationships with friends and neighbors are fundamental issues for humans. As
explained by attachment theorists (Ainsworth & Bowlby, 1991; Cassidy & Shaver, 1999),
evolution has equipped humans with an attachment behavioral system (Bowlby, 1982/
1969) that increases the likelihood of survival and reproduction by maintaining a persons
proximity to attachment figures relationship partners who provide protection and support.
Because of the nature of the attachment system, loving someone is both highly pleasurable
when all goes well, and potentially very painful when attachment relationships are disrupted
by separation or loss.
The love category in the U.S.A. (summarized in Table 1) contains only one potentially
negative term: longing. The corresponding category in the Indonesian study (Study 2,
presented here) contains more emphasis on desire and longing, which may be partly positive
and partly negative. It also contains the word rindu, which means yearning or homesickness
a concept included in the sadness group in English. Only in our study in China (Shaver et
al., 1992) were love words split into two separate groups, one merging with happiness on the
positive side of the hierarchy and the other residing next to sadness on the negative side. In
our view, these are different ways of characterizing the cross-culturally universal positive
and negative feelings associated with human attachments. It seems likely that the basic-level
construct love and subordinate-level constructs such as romantic love can be made to seem
more or less negative depending on how often attachments are culturally constrained and
frustrated (thereby making yearning salient) or broken (making the sad side of love salient).
No matter how attachment-related emotions are distributed among cognitive categories,
however, the universal pleasant and unpleasant consequences of attachment are likely to be
addressed somewhere in the emotion hierarchy of every language.
Limitations and future directions
Although the results of our two studies seem clear, certain limitations should be mentioned.
First, we focused on the official language of Indonesia, Bahasa Indonesia. Many citizens of
Indonesia speak one of several local dialects, either exclusively or in addition to Bahasa
Indonesia. Thus, we do not mean to imply that we have captured all of the emotion concepts
used in Indonesia. Some of the dialect differences in emotion concepts and language have
been explored extensively by Heider (1991). Second, we allowed Study 2 participants to
complete their sorting of emotion terms outside of class, in unsupervised ways. It might be
preferable in future studies to supervise each participant during the sorting process, although
the clarity and interpretability of the results, combined with correct handling of the duplicate
terms we included as procedural checks, make it unlikely that the results would be different
if participants had been supervised. Third, we did not include a sufficiently large sample in
Study 2 to support the examination of clustering differences related to gender and ethnicity.
Fourth, it would be desirable in future studies to include a linguist on the research team. We
made do with some articulate native consultants, but none of them were trained in
Indonesian linguistics. Especially when analyzing potential cultural differences at the
subordinate level of the emotion hierarchy, it would have been useful to have the expertise
of a linguist and possibly an anthropologist.
Future studies should examine the emotion hierarchies in languages from still other
language families. We obviously cannot be certain that our division of the emotion domain
into two superordinate and five basic-level categories is universal until we know how often
the structure replicates in other language communities. At present, however, the universality
of this structure or something highly similar to it seems likely, at least when our methods are
employed.
The different lists of basic emotions produced by different research methods (e.g., our
method versus studying facial expressions, as done by Ekman (1972), and Izard (1991),
among others), all of which seem valid in their own contexts, suggest that there will never be
a single correct list. The set of universal facial patterns, if in fact they are universal
(Fridlund, 1994; Russell, 1994), express emotions that language-using perceivers tend to
group into meaningful higher-order categories (for example, disgust is often placed in a
large anger category). Some important emotions, such as love (and perhaps some of its
specific, subordinate-level forms), may not be expressed in unique facial patterns. In fact,
many social emotions, such as love and shame, may be better indexed by behaviors and
vocal qualities than by muscle movements in the face. Similarly, the distinctions drawn by
careful analysts of the semantics of particular emotion terms (e.g., Goddard, 1996;
Wierzbicka, 1999) may be both real and scientifically significant, even though they are not
associated with particular facial expressions or empirically identified cognitive categories of
the kind we have described here.
The interest value, potential applications, and seeming validity of all the major
approaches to emotion and representations of emotion are what led us to say in the
Introduction that the field needs more detailed studies of emotion concepts using a range of
methods studies that can inform future theorizing. Eventually there will be a coherent
account of emotions and their cognitive and linguistic representations, but the account will
be coherent by virtue of incorporating all important components and revealing how they
relate to each other, not by virtue of reducing all of the components, or perspectives, to any
single one in existence today.
Notes
1 An example of this problem occurs, in our opinion, in Heiders (1991) otherwise interesting and
informative ethnographic book about the emotion concepts used by particular Indonesian
subcultures. Heider collected words by a kind of free-associative technique, resulting in a mixed
list of emotions and non-emotions.
2 The word surprise itself did not make the cut-off for the other words included in the study, so
the significance of the small category it formed with two other words was difficult to evaluate. As
will be seen later in this paper, no surprise category appeared in Indonesian when we made no
special effort to include (or exclude) surprise-related words.
3 We use English as a reference point in this article because we are writing in English, and two out
of the three of us (PRS and RCF) are native English speakers, while the third (UM) is fluent in
both English and Indonesian. We agree with Wierzbicka (1999), however, that there is no general
reason to make English terms the standard and treat terms from other languages as similar to or
different from their English cognates. If similar studies were done by a research team that shared
the Indonesian language but not English, it would be natural and sensible to refer the English
findings back to an Indonesian reference point.
4 Using IndonesianEnglish dictionaries allowed our research team to talk about what the selected
terms mean in English as well as Indonesian and was not expected to bias the pool of Indonesian
words, which were selected originally by native Indonesian speakers.
5 The following 76 terms received lower prototypicality ratings than the ones in Table 1 and are
listed here in descending order according to mean prototypicality scores; even less prototypical

words have been eliminated to save space: angkuh, 1.89, 3; gugup, 1.89, 1; sombong, 1.89, 1;
damba, 1.88, 0; panik, 1.88, 1; tenang, 1.88, 0; dingin hati, 1.86, 3; jemu, 1.86, 1; risih, 1.86, 2;
sirik, 1.86, 1; tegang, 1.85, 0; terkejut, 1.85, 1; kecut hati, 1.84, 0; tersipu, 1.83, 1; keinginan, 1.82,
0; ngeri, 1.82, 0; susah, 1.82, 0; lara, 1.81, 7; derita, 1.80, 1; kepanikan, 1.80, 0; tegar, 1.80, 1;
insaf, 1.79, 0; nyaman, 1.79, 1; peduli, 1.79, 0; lapang hati, 1.78, 1; nafsu, 1.78, 0; terpana, 1.78, 3;
acuh, 1.77, 2; masgul, 1.76, 22; sentimen, 1.76, 0; tertegun, 1.76, 1; harapan, 1.75, 0; sengit, 1.75,
0; congkak, 1.74, 2; muram, 1.73, 0; menawan, 1.71, 0; rela, 1.71, 2; pahit hati, 1.70, 2; takjub,
1.70, 2; gulana, 1.69, 16; kaget, 1.69, 0; semangat, 1.69, 0; terkasima, 1.69, 10; ragu, 1.68, 1;
ramah, 1.68, 0; enggan, 1.67, 1; mau, 1.67, 0; pongah, 1.67, 9; tercengang, 1.67, 2; bersungut,
1.66, 5; bergolak, 1.65, 2; pedas hati, 1.65, 8; terperanjat, 1.65, 1; manja, 1.64, 1; pasrah, 1.64, 0;
percaya, 1.64, 0; tawakal, 1.64, 5; hormat, 1.63, 0; ambar hati, 1.62, 24; enak, 1.62, 0; suntuk, 1.62,
1; tahan cobaan, 1.62, 2; menhargai, 1.61, 0; terlena, 1.61, 1; geli, 1.60, 1; jijik, 1.60, 2; salut, 1.60,
1; sempit hati, 1.58, 4; gegetun, 1.57, 47; ketidaksabaran, 1.57, 0; kehampaan, 1.55, 2; memuja,
1.54, 1; prasangka, 1.54, 0; masa bodoh, 1.52, 0; heran, 1.51, 2; merangsang, 1.50, 0.
6 The Indonesian instructions are available from the authors on request.
7 Alvarado (1998) criticized the open-ended sorting procedure we use, arguing that sorters should be
asked to sort all of the terms into two groups, then three groups, etc. Not only would this tax the
patience of volunteer participants, it would force them to make what they perceived to be
unnatural, forced distinctions. Our procedure has produced meaningful, highly interpretable, and
generally similar results in different cultures. Alvarados procedure seems not to have produced
intuitively reasonable results even in English, the only language she has examined so far.
8 The complete cluster diagram is available from the authors on request.
9 Shaver et al., (1992) reasoned along similar lines when trying to understand the special sad love
category at the basic level in the Chinese emotion hierarchy.
Acknowledgment
We are grateful to Eveline Agnes, Tobias Bonang, Jenny Chandra, Sylvie Hutabarat, Mudita
Mihardja, Prajna Murdaya, Murdaya Widyamarta Poo, Professor Wahyudi Prakarsa, I.
Rosalina, A-Tiong and Josephine Suryono-Lie, Agnes Usindi, and P. Wasta for assistance
with various phases of our research.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Phillip R. Shaver,
Department of Psychology, University of California, One Shields Avenue, Davis, CA
95616-8686, USA. E-mail: prshaver@ucdavis.edu
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Structure of The Indonesian Emotion Lexi

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Asian Journal of Social Psychology (2001) 4: 201224

Structure of the Indonesian emotion lexicon

Based on a prototype approach to emotion concepts, two studies were

The prototype approach to emotion concepts

Procedures used in the present studies

The Indonesian language

Table 1 The emotion hierarchy in English

Source: Based on Shaver et al., 1987

Aims of the present studies

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Results and discussion

bahagia 2.78 2 happiness, well-being

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kesal 2.23 0 feeling peeved, fed up, piqued, cross

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jenuh 2.00 1 feeling surfeited, fed up, sick and tired

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Results and discussion

Somewhat isolated emotion terms

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Table 3 The emotion hierarchy in Indonesian

Evaluation of the hypotheses

cinta (love) asmara romantic love

Limitations and future directions

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Ainsworth, M. D. S., & Bowlby, J. (1991). An ethological approach to personality development.

Blackwell Publishers Ltd with the Asian Association of Social Psychology

Cannon, W. B. (1932). The wisdom of the body. New York: Norton.

Blackwell Publishers Ltd with the Asian Association of Social Psychology

Blackwell Publishers Ltd with the Asian Association of Social Psychology

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