The Sims 4: Emotions and How They Work
Unlike previous sims games, The Sims 4 has added emotions into the mix and these emotions can serious up level your game, or make your sim’s day a bit more complicated. Emotions can be used to help your sims do better in social interactions, skill building, and even in getting promotions in your career.
However, some emotions are not so helpful and can hinder your ability to do the things your sims need to do. For example, a tense sim won’t want to do anything that involves using their brain so it may be hard to get a tense Teenager to do their homework.
One thing that is important to note is that your sims even have the ability to die from extreme emotions, which a lot of newbie simmers are unaware of in the early days, but we’ll discuss the different types of emotional death in a little bit.
Your sim’s emotions are going to be the main influence in how your sims are acting on a given day and the tasks that they are actually willing to do. Your sims traits can also have an effect on their emotions as well as the lot traits of the lot your sim is currently on.
Positive Emotions
Note: You can click any of the above emotions and that will bring you to their section on this page, trying to save you a bit of time with scrolling!
Negative Emotions
Types of Emotions
Happy
Your sim’s happy emotion is shown with a bright green background and aura around your sim in the bottom left hand corner. Having some happy moodlets is really awesome because they will boost any other emotions you have, so if you have a happiness +1 and an inspired +2, you’ll find your inspired moodlet to be boosted. You can see this with a moodlet that is a gradient between the two.
Happiness is a really great emotion to keep your sim’s in because it will give a small boost to all skill building, however, it is really small. You’ll see a larger boost in skill building if you have the appropriate emotion (i.e., focused for gaining logic).
When you get certain emotions you’ll see that different interactions are now available for your sims to use on another sim, and the new interaction available when your sim’s emotion is happy is heartfelt compliment which always goes over really well with friendship building.
If your sims have enough happy moodlets, you’ll see them becoming very happy which is a great feeling for your virtual people! This happens when you get at least 8 happiness moodlets that stack upon each other.
A sim that has the cheerful trait will see themselves getting random happy moodlets that will help keep them in this green zone, so if you’d like a genuinely happy sim, cheerful could be a great way to go.
Some easy ways to get a happiness moodlet include:
- Listening to Music on a Stereo
- Drinking Healthy Green Tea from the Magical Tea Brewer
- Upgrading Objects (i.e, adding a bidet to a toilet)
- Having a Nice Social Interaction
- Having Nice Decorations in the Home
- Having a Good Quality Meal
- Having High Needs
- Being around a Happy Aura Object
- Having a Delicious Mixed Drink
Sad
The sad emotion is shown with a dark blue background that will show up around your sim in the bottom left hand corner. You’ll notice that your sad sims will move a lot less quickly and are more likely to stop and cry if you don’t give them tasks to do.
You should pretty much never try and flirt when your sim is feeling sad because these advances will fail and your romance bar will decrease. If your sims are feeling sad they can even make other sims feel sad if they do enough sad interactions with other sims.
Some ways to get the sadness emotion moodlets include:
- Death of a Family Member
- Divorce
- Losing a Competition
- Having an Unwanted Sibling
- Family Oriented Sims Being away from Family Members
- Low Social Need
- Mourning
- Witnessing Death
If your sim has the gloomy trait you’ll find them being sad a lot more often so it may not be the best trait if you want your sim to be productive and happy. A great example of this is popular townie, Bob Pancakes.
If you want to remove your sim’s sad emotion you have a few simple options that can help, these include:
- Clicking on the bed and crying
- Giving yourself a pep talk
- Complaining to others about your problems
- Call the Sadness Hotline on the Phone
Angry
You can use the angry emotion as a way to build up your sim’s mischief skill a bit quicker than any other emotion. Angry sims are more likely to fight with other sims or be mean, so being angry and sending your sims out to socialize may not be the best option if you want to have a good reputation.
Some of the ways your sim can become angry include:
- Have a Sim with the Hates Children Trait Be Around Children
- Get Cheated On
- Get into an Argument with Another Sim
- Try to Prank Someone but Fail
- Hangout Around an Angry Aura Painting
If your sim has the hotheaded trait you’ll find your sim getting randomly angry at times so it’s important that you do some things to calm them down or you may find this emotion to grow and become deadly.
If you want to get rid of your sim’s angry emotion you have a couple options that can help decrease the length of the moodlet:
- Take an Angry Poop
- Take a Cold Shower
- Go for a Jog
- Lift Weights
- Calm Yourself Down in a Mirror
- Drink Calming Chamomile Tea
Bored
Your sim’s bored emotion will be shown with a grey background around your sim in the bottom left hand corner of the screen. Bored is a negative emotion but doesn’t really affect your sim all that much and is relatively easy to fix.
Most of the time, getting your sims emotion to be bored is random and isn’t up to you. There aren’t a ton of ways to make your sims feel bored, but a few of the options include:
- Performing the same social interaction numerous times
- Sometimes occurs when people get home from work
- When someone in the business career has to fill out reports they can sometimes get bored
- When a sim in the secret agent career has to research intelligence
- Reading a skill book that is a lower level than your sim already has
- Sometimes having an adult watch kids shows
To stop your sim from being bored, you essentially just need to send them off to do anything fun. Simple!
Dazed
Your sim’s dazed mood will be shown by a light purple background in the bottom left hand corner of the screen. When your sim is feeling dazed they’ll seem a bit more sleepy and you’ll also see them walking around a bit weird.
There are a few ways that you can get your sim to feel dazed, these include:
- Being bit by a Vampire
- Crashing Your Rocket Ship
- Getting Shocked When Repairing an Electronic
- Losing a Fight
- Having a Voodoo Doll Used on You
- Having a Weaponized Joke be Told to You
- Getting Sick
- Taking Medicine When You’re Sick
- Using The Bubble Bar
- Drinking Too Much Coffee
If your sim is feeling dazed from trying to fix an electronic, do not get them to try again until the dazed emotion is gone because they can and probably will die from a second electrocution.
The only way to really make the dazed emotion go away is to just try and sleep it off, or wait for it go to away. It’s one of the more annoying emotions in the sims 4 for that reason.
Confident
Your sim’s confident emotion will be shown through a dark blue background around them in the bottom left hand corner of the screen.
Your sims can even become very confident if they have enough of the confidence moodlets, or happiness moodlets that help to boost your sim’s confident emotion.
There are a few ways to make your sims feel confident, these include:
- Having the self assured trait
- Cooking a Delicious Meal
- Psyching Yourself Up in the Mirror
- Brushing Teeth
- Successfully Upgrading an Object
- Winning a Fight Against Another Sim
- A Child or Teen Getting an A
Sims who have the self assured trait can often find themselves feeling confident out of no where, which can be helpful for building your sims charisma skill since it boost that skill. Confidence will also help your sims social interactions because you’re less likely to fail an interaction if you’re feeling confident.
Being confident also unlocks a few new interactions, these include show off muscles, using a bold pick-up line, and proposing a crazy scheme.
Embarrassed
Your sim’s embarrassed emotion will be shown with a bright yellow background behind your sim in the bottom left hand corner of the screen. This is a negative emotion that can happen from a series of different interactions and events.
There are a ton of ways that your sims can become embarassed, and these include:
- Having another sim walk in while they’re using the toilet
- Peeing themselves
- Failed Social Interactions
- Talking about Woohoo as a Teen
- Having a Romantic Advance Rejected
- Answering the Questions Incorrectly to Enter either Sylvan Glade or Forgotten Grotto
- Rejected Marriage Proposals
- Playing an Instrument Poorly at a Low Level
Make sure your’e careful because if you have too many embarrassed moodlets that stack upon one another you can find your sim becoming mortified and this can lead to death. This happens when you get +6 embarrassed moodlets, be careful! You’ll notice your sim will go from very embarassed, to mortified. It’s important to note that you won’t die every single time your sim gets mortified, but there is always a chance.
You can also purchase a perk from the Reward Store using your satisfaction points called shameless which will make your sim entirely immune from ever feeling embarrassed which can be super helpful.
To get rid of your sim’s embarrassed emotion, you can:
- Click on a Bed and Choose Hide from Everyone
- Apologize (If it’s from a negative social interaction)
- Make Self-Depreciating Jokes
- Pep Talk in the Mirror
- Ask for Reassurance
- Share Insecurities
Energized
Your sim’s energized emotion will be shown by a bright and light green colour behind your sim in the bottom left hand corner. This emotion is super positive and can make your sim do a number of things more quickly.
Your sim can even stack energized moodlets and become very energized and then they can’t be stopped! A great thing about feeling energized is that your sim will get tired slower and be able to work out for longer periods of time, so energized emotions are great for any sim who is trying to get in shape or in the athletic career.
There are a number of ways that you can get your sims to feel energized, including the following:
- Taking a Brisk Shower
- Going Jogging
- Eating a High Energy Protein Platter
- Drinking Tea
- Drinking Energy Drinks
- Watching Sports on TV
- Aura from Citrine and Sapphire
When your sim is feeling energized they get a few new interactions including enthuse about interests, and hip bump. They can also unlock a few new exercises including push-ups, stretching, and sit-ups.
Energized is an amazing time to get your sims to take a shower because they will have the Take a Speedy Shower option open up to them and these shows are super quick and get the hygeine need up.
Fine
Fine is an emotion that is shown through a grey colour around your sim in the bottom left hand corner. This emotion is very unlikely to be seen often as there is usually something out there affecting your sim’s moods. This one only occurs if your sim has no moodlets and never really lasts long.
Flirty
Your sim’s flirty emotion will be shown through a light pink colour behind your sim in the bottom left hand corner of the screen. This is a great emotion for your sim to be feeling if you are trying to get them in a romantic relationship with another sim.
When your sim is feeling flirty and has a romantic relationship with another sim you’ll unlock a few new interactions. These include kiss hands, sexy pose and offer rose. If you have a great romantic relationship you’ll also unlock passionate kiss.
If you can get both of your partners feeling flirty before they woohoo, you may even get a Fantastic Woohoo moodlet that will make your sims happy.
There are a few ways for you to get your sims feeling flirty, these include the following:
- Take a Steamy Shower
- Freshen up in Mirror
- Research Pick-up Lines
- Have the Romantic Aura Lot Trait
- Use a Romantic Aura Lamp
If you want your sims to feel flirty often, you can use lot traits to help that. You just need to choose the romantic aura lot trait and your sims will be flirty all the time, and so will any other sims that come to visit.
If you’re trying to remove your sim’s flirty emotion, the only real way to do so is to take a cold shower and sometimes that doesn’t even help.
Focused
Your sim’s focused emotion will be shown by a purple background behind your sim in the bottom left hand corner of the screen. You can get your sims to feel super focused which can really help to boost some skills.
Focused is one of the most valuable emotions for your sims to be experiencing because it can boost so many of your sim’s skills. This includes rocket science, video gaming, logic, programming, handiness, fishing, and gardening.
There are a few ways for your sims to gain the focused emotion, these include the following:
- Browse Simipedia on the Computer
- Examine a Fossil
- Ponder Moves on the Chess Table
- Reasearch the Intelligence Data Base (Secret Agent Career)
- Looking at a Mathematical Diagram
- Randomly Occurs with Genius Trait
- Reading Books
- Studying Fossils
Feeling focused also helps your children and teens get their homework or school projects done a lot more quickly and can help to boost their school performance.
Inspired
Your sim’s inspired emotion will be shown through a light blue background shown behind your sim in the bottom left hand corner. I’ve found that inspired is one of the easiest emotions to get and can be really helpful in every single creative skill.
When your sim is feeling inspired they’ll be able to make higher quality meals, paintings, books, etc. This means that inspired is a great tool if you’re trying to finish the artist or chef aspirations since you need to complete excellent quality work to finish them off.
Some of the ways to start feeling inspired include:
- Admiring Art
- Browsing Art on the Computer
- Take a Thoughtful Shower
- Research Art References on Computer
- Aura from Postcards
- Drink Prose and Pop Drink
- Sims with Creative Trait Get Inspired Often
- Cloud Gazing
- Home Studio Lot Trait
- Children can Day Dream (Level 5 Creative)
Having your sim feel inspired will boost their skill gains for cooking, painting, gourmet cooking, violin, guitar, piano, organ, and mixology. Having boosts to this many different skills shows how valuable it can be!
When your sim is feeling inspired they will unlock a few new social interactions including talk about dreams, describe new idea, and propose crazy scheme.
Playful
Your sim’s playful emotion will be shown by a bright purple background behind your sim in the bottom left hand corner of the screen.
The playful emotion really helps build the comedy skill more quickly and can help most jokes be accepted and land more frequently.
Feeling playful unlocks a few new interactions including, make a flirty joke, flash crazy eyes, impishly pester, and slap ’em silly. I’ve always found it interesting that under playful there are a mischief interaction and a mean interaction, when it’s seen as a mostly positive emotion.
To get your sim to start feeling playful, you can do any of the following:
- Tell Jokes or Listen to Jokes
- MySims Trophies give a Playful Aura
- Watch Comedy on TV
- Watch Funny Videos Online
- Take a Bubble Bath
- Eat Silly Gummy Bear Pancakes
If you don’t want your sims to become playful, you should try and avoid doing any funny interactions as other interactions won’t make your sims feel playful. Be careful not to get your sim feeling too playful, because if they become hysterical there is a chance of dying from the emotion.
If you’d like to get rid of the playful emotion, you should try taking a cold shower or calming yourself down in the mirror.
Uncomfortable
Your sim’s uncomfortable emotion will be shown by a red background behind your sim in the bottom left hand corner of the screen. Uncomfortable is an emotion that will come often if your sim has low needs.
This comes mostly from low hunger, bladder, energy, or hygiene needs. Your sim can also feel uncomfortable if they are feeling nauseous (i.e., a vegetarian eating a meat dish, or a pregnant woman with morning sickness). Sims can also feel uncomfortable if their surroundings are dirty or if they use any plumbing that isn’t clean. Your sims may also feel uncomfortable if they sleep in a really cheap bed.
To get rid of your sim’s uncomfortable mood you either need to ride it out and wait, or get rid of the problem by caring for their needs or cleaning the house.
Tense
Your sim’s tense emotion will be shown through an orange background on your sim in the bottom left hand corner of the screen. When your sim is feeling tense you’ll notice them moving a bit slower and often throwing their hands up in tense frustration.
Some of the ways your sims can become tense include the following:
- Choosing “Work Hard” While Your Sim is at Work or School
- A Fire in the Home
- Low Fun Need
- Geek Sims not Using Computer
- Loner Sims Being Around Others
- Loves The Outdoors Sims Spending Too Much Time Inside
- Reading a Skill Book at a Higher Level Than Your Sim
The easiest way to get rid of a tense sims mood is to just go and do something fun, like playing video games, and the tense mood should go away soon.
How to Cheat for a Good Mood
As with most things in The Sims 4, Emotions are able to be cheated as well. First you need to hit ctrl + shift + c on your keyboard and open up the cheat dialogue box. Then type in testingcheats true into the box and hit enter. This cheat allows all cheats to work and opens up the mailbox cheat system.
Now you just need to press shift and click on the mailbox at the same time and some new interactions will be unlocked. You can choose fill needs and choose either household or world and make your sims needs completely full. This will take away any needs caused moodlets and will make it easier for you to get another emotion. Now just go off and do any of the things listed to get a specific emotion and you’ll be good to go!
Extreme Emotions and Death
It’s important to note that a few of your sim’s emotions can lead towards your sim’s death, which is never fun since we don’t expect it to happen. If you get past the first level of the emotions you’ll only have a short amount of time to get your emotions back on track before you’ll be gone forever.
Emotions That Lead to Death
1. Angry
If you get your sim past a normal level of anger, your sim will start to feel enraged. You’ll have a chance to either get them more angry to boost up the enraged emotion, or you can get them to take an angry poop or a cold shower to try and get them back down to just angry so they no longer risk death.
You can also use a cheat to make your sim feel enraged and get that to lead to their death. Hit ctrl + shift + c to open up the dialogue box and type in testingcheats true to let all cheats work. Then type in sims.add_buff buff_Enraged to give yourself the enraged emotion.
2. Playful
If you get your sim feeling playful, but do too many playful interactions after the fact, you’ll find your seem feeling hysterical which can lead to their death. Get your sim to continue doing things that will cause a playful emotion to ensure that they will die of laughter.
You can also cheat your way to your sim feeling hysterical. Hit ctrl + shift + c to open up the dialogue box and type in testingcheats true to let all cheats work. Then type in sims.add_buff buff_Hysterical to give yourself the hysterical emotion.
3. Embarrassed
If you have a sim who is already feeling embarrassed, you can do a few more things that may cause embarrassment and they will die from being mortified. A good way to do this is to try and propose to someone who you know will say no.
You can also cheat your way to your sim feeling mortified. Hit ctrl + shift + c to open up the dialogue box and type in testingcheats true to let all cheats work. Then type in sims.add_buff buff_Mortified to give yourself the mortified emotion.
4. Dazed
Your sim can die of electrocution, which is somewhat an emotional death. If you get a sim who has a low level handiness skill to try and repair an electronic, chances are they’ll start feeling dazed after getting electrocuted.
If you get them to try and repair something electronic immediately after, chances are they are going to die from electrocution.
You can also cheat your sim to get the first level of electrocution. Hit ctrl + shift + c to open up the dialogue box and type in testingcheats true to let all cheats work. Then type sims.add_buff buff_death_electrocution_warning and this will get your sim the first level of electrocution.
Final Thoughts
Emotions in The Sims 4 are a really amazing way to add a new level of fun and game play, they really affect how your sims are acting and reacting to the world around them. What is your favourite emotion in the sims 4? Are you a fan of the emotion system? Let me know in the comments!
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