What do you think is the strongest emotion in human?

Tsuru

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I never thought about it, but since a chinese novel pointed it out to be Fear, I decided to google it and found other contenders such as Love, Guilt, Shame etc.

What do you think is the strongest emotion in human?
anger
sadness

russian is correct, but not too.

anger is the biggest and purest strongest drive for someone.
sadness, is a contender for it.
Even though i dont really appreciate in "comedy is tragedy" idiom, its undeniable that sadness is the biggest emotion to influence someone (and readers for books) (also why there was a while ago, a surge of movie-maker and anime-maker CN MCs that do focus on tragedy / "I make my audience cry" spam)
Hope, and or Lust. Those two make the world go around and stay.
That is also why, some CNs mention : The worse pain isnt DESPAIR, but it is DESPAIR AFTER receiving hope in despair (broken hope).
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Novel:
[Heavy tone] "Why did you need to show me the light? I could bear to be in the darkness until you showed it to me"
 

Vnator

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Lust and Spite. They'll drive a human being to incredible lengths, beyond what they would otherwise normally do for anything, to be satisfied
 

GlassRose

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Naturally, the ones that are directly responsible for the survival and propagation of the human race will be the strongest, emotions exist to incentivise useful behaviors. The primary ones are fear, aggression, and lust. Fear, to escape danger. Aggression, to eliminate danger and seize resources, and lust, to create the next generation. If you consider hunger and thirst (and tiredness) as emotions (I don't, but an argument could be made), then those would also probably be among the strongest as well, if not definitively.

Loneliness and love (of all it's different varieties, romantic, platonic, familial, communal, etc) are contenders for the title as well, and they come in a set. They are meant to incentivise communities sticking together, which is beneficial for survival via passing on knowledge, allowing young to be raised in a safe environment (and sometimes inciting self-sacrifice for the sake of those young, who carry the future of the race), and supporting members while incapacitated and temporarily unable to gather food (or perform other tasks) due to injury, disease, or pregnancy.

Happiness and sadness are both auxiliary, they apply widely to many different aspects of life, which is a different kind of strength, but they mostly exist to encourage and discourage behaviors passively, rather than incite direct action.

Guilt and shame and embarrassment are important for maintaining the tribe by punishing behaviors that could be problematic to it as a whole and ensuring that no one acts to out-of-place so as to maintain tighter bonds between members.

I could go on. Ultimately it's pretty fallacious to try and put any one emotion above the others, they all serve vital purposes. And which one is a more powerful motivator/driving force depends heavily on the individual.
The desire to be a dragon.
Idk about that, a lot of people would rather be catgirls. Puppygirls and foxgirls are also pretty popular.
 
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BearlyAlive

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Ambition. But that isn't really an emotion, but rather the main building block of most emotions. Love? The ambition to be liked. Fear? The ambition to not suffer. Hatred? The ambition to make others suffer. Lust? The ambition to fornicate. Sloth? The ambition to not do anything. Pride? The ambition to look better than others. Hope? The ambition to make things better.

Despair seems to be the only one where ambition part does not fit, and so the definition of Despair in this model would be "The (violent) loss of ambition".

I guess Ambition/Despair would be the contender for strongest.
 

Nolff

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I would like to say Will, but we all know everyone bombards Will whenever someone said "Fire at will!".
 

owotrucked

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I agree that fear is the strongest emotion in the plainest sense of how strongly the mind experiences it. To make an analogy, I'd say that fear is wired/coded at a highest authority in the brain.

Generally, I observe that instincts are biased towards negativity like how loss aversion is rated higher than greed in experiments.

From a survival standpoint, if fear serves as a strategy for preservation, it has to take precedence over all other emotions. For instance, you should drop everything at hand to dodge the incoming bear instead of fiddling with whatever delicious berry brush you found.

Although it may be the general trend, there are always cases of selfless split-second decisions like shielding loved ones.

In conclusion, fear is generally the most intense emotion if you look at the overall population. But love can win. It's not a given, but it makes it all the more impressive and valuable.
 

QuercusMalus

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Fear.
Fear of hunger taught us to hunt. Fear of the cold, the night and the animals taught us to wield fire. Fear of the elements taught us to build clothing and shelter. Fear of death and injury from fights for territory caused us to travel. Fear of disease and illness taught us medicine. Fear of starvation caused us to try eating foods that make no fucking sense (looking at you artichokes).
 
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Cipiteca396

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I'll definitely throw in with Curiosity.

The entire 'meaning of life' that I threw into my backstory is Souls being curious about what it's like to experience different lives and emotions and such, and choosing to reincarnate over and over again.

There's a couple of 'True' emotions that Souls feel, but curiosity is the standout. Other emotions are too closely tied to individual lives to be important (from a certain perspective).
 

Sergeandgreen

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I think the emotion that usually has the most influence on our actions is actually pride. However, it's not really the strongest, even if it has the most influence. Love is definitely a strong contender, as it is supported by a biological imperative. It also gives us motivation, which is further enhanced by social recognition, and culturally, we are conditioned to believe that it is the strongest emotion. However, I would argue that love can be trumped by despair. People who experience true despair can lose the will to procreate and love. Some even lose the will to eat, and, most importantly, people may choose to die rather than endure despair any longer. Despair overshadows any other emotion and biological instinct so i would consider it the strongest.
 
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