{
  "id": "pleasure.feeling",
  "term": "pleasure",
  "sense": "feeling",
  "pos": "noun",
  "status": "published",
  "level": 17,
  "arena": "E8",
  "domain": "psychology",
  "style": null,
  "definition": "A feeling in a human that the human wants to have more of.",
  "folk_gloss": null,
  "emergence": {
    "components": [
      "feel.sensory",
      "human.person",
      "want.desire"
    ],
    "interaction": "A feeling couples to wanting: the state itself makes the human want its continuation.",
    "novel_properties": [
      "positive valence",
      "reinforcement"
    ]
  },
  "examples": [
    {
      "text": "A person laughs while eating a ripe mango, savoring the sweet juice dripping down their chin.",
      "domain": "everyday life"
    },
    {
      "text": "Dopamine spikes in a rat's nucleus accumbens when it presses a lever to receive a sugar solution.",
      "domain": "neuroscience"
    },
    {
      "text": "Visitors return repeatedly to the 'Infinity Mirrors' exhibit at the Hirshhorn Museum, smiling and clapping.",
      "domain": "art"
    }
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "id": "want.desire",
      "type": "enables",
      "note": "pleasure is what wanting points back at"
    }
  ],
  "used_by": [
    "happy.emotional"
  ],
  "forms": [
    "pleasant",
    "pleasure",
    "pleasures"
  ],
  "closed": true,
  "provenance": {
    "author": "hand",
    "date": "2026-07-30",
    "confidence": 1.0
  },
  "canonical": "https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-pleasure.feeling"
}