Mental health professionals and educators say the movies are remarkably helpful in providing a common language they can use with children and parents.
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But soon after the idea was born, Docter was stymied, he said, about which feelings to include; it turns out psychologists do not even have a consensus on how many there are. “Certain researchers will say that there are five emotions; others say 14,” Docter said. Dacher Keltner, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who served as a consultant on the movies, contends there are 27 categories, with fuzzy boundaries.