# data[].attributes.body
Gli studenti identificheranno e descriveranno diverse emozioni attraverso esempi di vita quotidiana e di letteratura.

# data[].attributes.body
Lavagna, marcatori, computer con accesso a Internet, Padlet per attività collaborative e presentazioni.

# data[].attributes.body
Attività Rompighiaccio: Giochi di espressione emotiva in gruppi.

# data[].attributes.body
Introduzione al Vocabolario delle Emozioni: Studenti classificano parole associate con emozioni in categorie.

# data[].attributes.body
Disegno delle Emozioni: Gli studenti disegnano emozioni e condividono le loro opere con la classe.

# data[].attributes.body
Gioco di Ruolo: Simulazione di scenari per esprimere varie emozioni in modo appropriato.

# data[].attributes.body
Creazione di un Video Collaborativo: Gli studenti usano Padlet per creare un video breve che rappresenta diverse emozioni.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Three components of emotion and the universal emotions | MCAT | Khan Academy

# data[].attributes.body
Quiz sulle Emozioni: Un quiz interattivo online per valutare la comprensione delle emozioni.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Facial expressions are a universal language of emotion. How well do you read other people?

# data[].attributes.body
Presentazioni degli Studenti: Gli studenti preparano presentazioni sulle emozioni utilizzando ricerche e esperienze personali.

# data[].attributes.body
Momento di Riflessione: Gli studenti condividono i loro pensieri sull'importanza delle emozioni nella comunicazione quotidiana.

# data[].attributes.body
Progetto di Ricerca sulle Emozioni: Gli studenti conducono una piccola ricerca sulle emozioni, utilizzando internet e interviste per raccogliere informazioni.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Abstract

Emotion feeling is a phase of neurobiological activity, the key component of emotions and emotion-cognition interactions. Emotion schemas, the most frequently occurring emotion experiences, are dynamic emotion-cognition interactions that may consist of momentary/ situational responding or enduring traits of personality that emerge over developmental time. Emotions play a critical role in the evolution of consciousness and the operations of all mental processes. Types of emotion relate differentially to types or levels of consciousness. Unbridled imagination and the ability for sympathetic regulation of empathy may represent both potential gains and losses from the evolution and ontogeny of emotion processes and consciousness. Unresolved issues include psychology's neglect of levels of consciousness that are distinct from access or reflective consciousness and use of the term "unconscious mind" as a dumpster for all mental processes that are considered unreportable. The relation of memes and the mirror neuron system to empathy, sympathy, and cultural influences on the development of socioemotional skills are unresolved issues destined to attract future research.

Keywords: emotion schemas, emotion-cognition interactions, emotion knowledge, emotion regulation, emotion utilization, meme, development, consciousness, levels of awareness, emotion feelings

INTRODUCTION

This prefatory chapter, like every essay, review, or data-based article, is influenced by its author's feelings about the topics and issues under consideration as well as the author's personality and social and cultural experiences. To help counterbalance the effects of such influences on this article and provide some perspective on its contents, I present below the major theses that have emerged in my theorizing and research on emotions.

THEORETICAL PRINCIPLES

The key principles of differential emotions theory (DET; Izard 2007a) have changed periodically. They change primarily because of advances in methodology and research. They may also change as a result of theoretical debates that highlight the need for some clarifications and distinctions among constructs. The current set of principles highlight distinctly different types of emotions and their roles in the evolution and development of different levels of consciousness/awareness and of mind, human mentality, and behavior. The ongoing reformulations of DET principles are facilitated by advances in emotion science, cognitive neuroscience, and developmental clinical science, as well as in social and personality psychology. For the present article, the seven principles below guided the choice of topics and the selective review of the literature on emotions and their relations to cognition, action, and consciousness. They led to a new perspective on emotion-related gains and losses from evolution and opened the door to theoretical development and research on emerging topics such as the role of the mirror neuron system in emotion experiences, empathy, and sympathy and memes and their relations to emotion schemas.

An overarching aspect of the theoretical perspective represented in the following principles and in this article is that emotion and cognition, though often treated correctly as having functionally separate features and influences (e.g., Bechara et al. 2000, Talmi & Frith 2007), are interactive and integrated or mingled in the brain (cf. Lewis 2005, Pessoa 2008, Phelps 2006). This thesis is consistent with the long-standing recognition of the high degree of connectivity among the brain's neural structures and systems. I hypothesize that emotion will have substantial and measurable effects on cognition and action when the stimulus or situation is a personally or socially significant one. The foregoing general thesis and the more specific hypothesis seem to run counter to extreme constructivist positions. Such positions (e.g., Barrett 2006) define or locate emotion at the level of perception and apparently have no place for the idea of interactions among distinct features of emotion (e.g., motivation/feeling) and cognition (e.g., higher-order conceptual processes). The present position may bear some similarity to componential-dynamic approaches, at least in terms of continuously changing aspects or configurations of mental processes (e.g., Ellsworth 1994, Scherer 2000). However, the present position may differ from the latter in viewing emotion and cognition as always interacting and thus normally precluding pure cognitive and emotion states.

SEVEN PRINCIPLES

1. Emotion feeling ( a) derives from evolution and neurobiological development, ( b) is the key psychological component of emotions and consciousness, and ( c) is more often inherently adaptive than maladaptive.

2. Emotions play a central role in the evolution of consciousness, influence the emergence of higher levels of awareness during ontogeny, and largely determine the contents and focus of consciousness throughout the life span.

3. Emotions are motivational and informational, primarily by virtue of their experiential or feeling component. Emotion feelings constitute the primary motivational component of mental operations and overt behavior.

4. Basic emotion feelings help organize and motivate rapid (and often more-or-less automatic though malleable) actions that are critical for adaptive responses to immediate challenges to survival or wellbeing. In emotion schemas, the neural systems and mental processes involved in emotion feelings, perception, and cognition interact continually and dynamically in generating and monitoring thought and action. These dynamic interactions (which range from momentary processes to traits or trait-like phenomena) can generate innumerable emotion-specific experiences (e.g., anger schemas) that have the same core feeling state but different perceptual tendencies (biases), thoughts, and action plans.

5. Emotion utilization, typically dependent on effective emotion-cognition interactions, is adaptive thought or action that stems, in part, directly from the experience of emotion feeling/motivation and in part from learned cognitive, social, and behavioral skills.

6. Emotion schemas become maladaptive and may lead to psychopathology when learning results in the development of connections among emotion feelings and maladaptive cognition and action.

7. The emotion of interest is continually present in the normal mind under normal conditions, and it is the central motivation for engagement in creative and constructive endeavors and for the sense of well-being. Interest and its interaction with other emotions account for selective attention, which in turn influences all other mental processes.

Elaboration and empirical support for principles 1-6 can be found in the following sources and their reference lists ( Ackerman et al. 1998; Izard 2002, 2007a; Izard et al. 2008a, b, c; Silvia 2006). Principles 1-3 apply to all emotions, and 4-6 primarily concern emotion schemas. Principle 7 consists of propositions about the most ubiquitous of all human emotions-interest-excitement. Specific empirical support does not exist for the hypothesis of continual interest in the normal mind.

In this article, I discuss the issues of defining the term "emotion" and types of emotion, emotion-cognition interactions, emotions and consciousness, relations among types of emotions and types of consciousness, and note some remarkable gains and losses from the evolution of emotions and multiple levels consciousness.

This article addresses a critical need for clear distinctions between basic positive and basic negative emotions and particularly between brief basic emotion episodes and emotion schemas. Unlike basic negative emotions that occur in brief episodes and involve very little cognition beyond minimal perceptual processes, emotion schemas involve emotion and cognition (frequently higher-order cognition) in dynamic interactions ( Izard 1977, 1984; cf. emotional interpretation, Lewis 2005).

This article also contrasts phenomenal (primary) and access (reflective) consciousness, considers the construct of levels of consciousness, and questions the integrity of current conceptualizations of the unconscious mind. Typically, psychologists ignore the concepts of phenomenal consciousness and levels of consciousness and do not distinguish these constructs from the unconscious. I conclude by identifying some unanswered questions and briefly comment on a few emerging topics-continuous emotion-cognition interactions, memes and emotions, and the mirror neuron system and empathy-that seem destined to become more prominent in psychological science in the coming years.

ON THE ORIGINS AND NATURE OF EMOTIONS

None of the many efforts to make a widely acceptable definition of emotion has proved successful ( Izard 2006, Panksepp 2003a). Yet, I dare once again to raise the 124-year-old storied question asked by James (1884): What is emotion? It happens that the answer James gave to his own question has a rather popular reprieve in the annals of contemporary neuroscience. Like James, Damasio (1999) argued that brain responses constitute emotion or the body expression of emotion and that emotion feeling is a consequence of the neurobiological (body) expression. In contrast, I propose that emotion feeling should be viewed as a phase (not a consequence) of the neurobiological activity or body expression of emotion (cf. Langer 1967/1982).

The Origins of Emotions

Russell (2003) proposed that core affect is continuous in the brain and provides information on the pleasure/displeasure and arousal value of stimuli. In contrast, I have maintained that a discrete emotion or pattern of interacting emotions are always present (though not necessarily labeled or articulated) in the conscious brain ( Izard 1977, ch. 6; Izard 2007a, b). Barrett (2006) suggested that discrete emotions arise as a result of a conceptual act on core affect or as a function of "conceptual structure that is afforded by language" ( Barrett et al. 2007, p. 304). In contrast, we have proposed that discrete emotion feelings cannot be created, taught, or learned via cognitive processes ( Izard & Malatesta 1987; Izard 2007a, b). As Edelman & Tononi (2000) observed, "... emotions are fundamental both to the origins of and the appetite for conscious thought" (p. 218, cf. Izard 1977, ch. 6). So, perceptual and conceptual processes and consciousness itself are more like effects of emotions than sources of their origin. Discrete emotion experiences emerge in ontogeny well before children acquire language or the conceptual structures that adequately frame the qualia we know as discrete emotion feelings. Moreover, acquiring language does not guarantee that emotion experiences can always be identified and communicated verbally. Even adults have great difficulty articulating a precise description of their emotion feelings (cf. Langer 1967/1982).

Emotion Feeling as Neurobiological Activity

Defining emotion feeling as a phase of a neurobiological process circumvents the argument that feeling is nonphysical and hence cannot be causal. A counterargument, though, is that at best, feelings are only the qualia of neurobiological processes and not neurobiological activity per se. However, even if this were true, Edelman (2006) maintains that qualia could still be described as causal because they are true representations of core thalamo-cortical activity. Thus, whether or not one accepts the present proposal that feelings are a phase of neurobiological activity, they can still be conceived as causal processes.

The present formulation of the origins and nature of emotion feelings differs from those that describe emotion feeling and emotion state (or emotion-related neurobiological activity) as separate and independent (e.g., Lambie & Marcel 2002). Moreover, the view of emotion feeling as a phase of the neurobiological activity or body expression of emotion differs from the idea that neurobiological or body expression must precede emotion feeling ( Damasio 1999, p. 283). The current description of emotion feeling is tantamount to saying that it is evolved and unlearned neurobiological activity. For those who think that the idea of emotion feelings as evolved neurobiological processes is strange or unfounded, the tough questions are: Where else could emotion feelings come from? What else could they be?

Feeling is the Key Psychological Aspect of Emotion: Motivation and Information

Through development, the conceptual self becomes important to the process of feeling and expressing an emotion, but a higher-order conceptual "self " is not essential for either. Infants experience and express basic emotions long before they can provide any evidence of a self-concept ( Izard et al. 1995), and so do children without a cerebral cortex ( Merker 2007).

Agreement on Components and Characteristics of Emotion

Emotions as Causal Processes

Although experts agree that emotions motivate or influence cognition and action, not all agree on precisely what mediates the effects of emotions. The answer may depend on whether it is a basic emotion or an emotion schema. It may also depend on whether and how a distinction is made in the roles of emotion neurophysiology and emotion feelings (cf. Panksepp 2003a, b).

Arguably, no one thing (even emotion) is ever the sole mediator of personally or socially significant behavior. Other person and contextual variables typically contribute to the causal processes. Yet, I propose that emotion feeling is virtually always one of the mediators of action in response to basic emotion and a mediator of thought and action in response to emotion schemas. Thus, the specific impact of emotion feeling in generating and altering behavior depends on the type of emotion involved in the causal process. Feeling in basic emotion affects action but not higher-order cognition, which has little or no presence in basic emotion processes. Feeling in emotion schemas may frequently affect action and will surely affect cognition. Thinking is a key agent in regulating (sometimes suppressing; Gross 2002) and guiding behavior that stems from emotion schemas.

TYPES OF EMOTIONS

Emotions can be usefully divided into two broad types or kinds-basic emotion episodes and dynamic emotion-cognition interactions or emotion schemas. Failure to make and keep the distinction between these two kinds of emotion experiences may be the biggest source of misunderstandings and misconceptions in current emotion science ( Izard 2007a, Gray et al. 2005). I included an update on the distinction between types of emotions here for two reasons. First, I see the fundamental nature of emotions and the closely connected issue of emotion-cognition-action processes as central to emotion science, now and for the foreseeable future. Second, I think researchers often look for the correlates and effects of basic emotions (labeled simply as emotions) when the variables in their experiments are actually emotion-cognition interactions or emotion schemas.

Basic Emotions

Basic positive emotions

The basic positive emotions of interest and joy (e.g., an infant's interest activated by the human face; Langsdorf et al. 1983) and joy activated by the familiar face of her mother ( Izard et al. 1995) are equally essential to survival, evolution, and development. However, their structure and time course may differ significantly from each other. The infant's experiences of joy may be relatively brief by comparison with experiences of interest. The basic positive emotion of interest motivates play in early development and thus may have short or relatively long duration.

Basic positive emotions emerge in early ontogeny ( Izard et al. 1995). Like the basic negative emotions, they are subject to developmental changes. The most critical of these changes is mediated by the acquisition of language and emotion labels and the ability to communicate (or share) emotion experiences through symbolic processes or language ( Izard 1971, Izard et al. 2008).

Basic negative emotions

Basic negative emotions (sadness, anger, disgust, fear) typically run their course automatically and stereotypically in a brief time span. The basic emotion of fear (or a fear-action episode) was described rather precisely in the earliest human records: "A man who stumbles upon a viper will jump aside: as trembling takes his knees, pallor his cheeks; he backs and backs away ..." (Homer's Iliad, c. 7000 BCE, p. 68).

Research has repeatedly demonstrated that in mammals, the experience and expression of basic fear is mediated by the amygdala ( LeDoux 1996, Mobbs et al. 2007). Typically, basic negative emotions are activated by subcortical sensory-discriminative processes in response to ecologically valid stimuli ( Ekman 2003, LeDoux 1996, Öhman 2005). Perceptual processes and action usually follow and run their course rapidly and automatically to enhance the likelihood of gaining an adaptive advantage (cf. LeDoux 1996, Öhman 2002, Tomkins 1962). Because of their nature, some basic negative emotions (e.g., sadness, anger, fear) are difficult to study in the laboratory. Thus, most extant research on what are usually called emotions (most often negative emotions) actually concerns negative emotion schemas.

Basic or fundamental emotions?

The discrete emotions of shame, guilt, and contempt (sometimes called the social or self-conscious emotions) and the pattern of emotions in love and attachment may be considered basic in the sense that they are fundamental to human evolution, normative development, human mentality, and effective adaptation. After language acquisition, the emotions related to the self-concept or self-consciousness are typically emotion schemas that involve higher-order cognition (e.g., about self and self-other relationships) and have culture-related cognitive components ( Tangney et al. 2007).

Emotion Schemas: Dynamic Emotion-Cognition Interactions

The core idea of dynamic interaction between emotion and cognition has a long and venerable history dating back at least to the earliest written records: "... Peleus ... lashed out at him, letting his anger ride in execration ..." (Homer's Iliad, c. 7000 BCE). The idea was prominently displayed in seventeenth-century philosophy ( Bacon 1620/1968, Spinoza 1677/1957) and was most eloquently elaborated by Langer (1967/1982).

Positive and negative emotion schemas may have a relatively brief duration or continue over an indefinitely long time course. A principal reason why they can endure more or less indefinitely is because their continually interacting cognitive component provides a means to regulate and utilize them. Evidence indicates that experimentally facilitated formation of emotion schemas (simply learning to label and communicate about emotion feelings) generates adaptive advantages ( Izard et al. 2008a; cf. Lieberman et al. 2007). Although we have very little data relating to their normative development, neuroscientists have begun to increase our knowledge of the substrates of emotion-cognition interactions ( Fox et al. 2005, Gross 2002, Lewis 2005, Northoff et al. 2004, Phelps 2006).

Emotion schemas and traits of temperament/personality

Frequently recurring emotion schemas may stabilize as emotion traits or as motivational components of temperament/ personality traits ( Diener et al. 1995, Goldsmith & Campos 1982, Izard 1977, Magai & Hunziker 1993, Magai & McFadden 1995; cf. Mischel & Shoda 1995, Tomkins 1987). In normal development, the cognitive content of emotion schemas should enhance the regulatory, motivational, and functional capacities of their feeling components. However, in some gene X environment interactions, a cluster of interrelated emotion schemas may become a form of psychopathology (e.g., anxiety and depressive disorders: Davidson 1994, 1998; J.A. Gray 1990; J.R. Gray et al. 2005; Izard 1972; Magai & McFadden 1995).

Early-emerging emotion schemas

Aside from the simple emotion-cognition connections that a prelinguistic infant forms (e.g., between her own feelings of interest and joy and a perception/image of her mother's face), the earliest emotion schemas probably consist of attaching labels to emotion expressions and feelings. Development of emotion labeling and the process of putting feelings into words begin toward the end of the second year of life and continue during the preschool and elementary school years ( Izard 1971) and throughout the life span. Indeed, games and activities that promote the accurate labeling of emotion expressions and experiences have been a component of intervention processes for many years (see Domitrovich & Greenberg 2004 and Denham & Burton 2003 for reviews).

Emotion schemas or affective-cognitive units?

The concept of affective-cognitive structure or emotion schema ( Izard 1977, 2007a) seems quite similar to that of the affective-cognitive unit as described in the cognitive-affective personality system (CAPS) theory of personality ( Mischel & Shoda 1995, 1998). One significant difference may be that in the CAPS approach, an affective-cognitive unit is conceived mainly as a stable or characteristic mediating process or part of the personality system. In DET, an emotion schema may be either a temporally stable trait-like phenomenon (affective-cognitive structure) or a brief emotion-cognition interaction that may mediate behavior in a specific situation. Compared to the CAPS approach, DET gives emotion a greater role in motivation and assumes that the emotion component of the emotion schema drives the behavior mapped or framed by perceptual-cognitive processes. DET also emphasizes that, as seen particularly clearly in early development and in emotion-based preventive interventions, connecting appropriate cognition to emotion feelings increases the individual's capacity for emotion modulation and self-regulation ( Izard et al. 2008a). DET and CAPS agree in assigning a significant causal role to the dynamic interplay of emotion and cognition in determining human behavior. Both approaches also conceptualize the interplay of emotion and cognitive processes as sources of data on ideographic or within-subject differences in emotion-cognition-behavior relations.

In brief, emotion schemas are causal or mediating processes that consist of emotion and cognition continually interacting dynamically to influence mind and behavior. It is the dynamic interaction of these distinct features (emotion and cognition) that enables an emotion schema, acting in the form of a situation-specific factor or a trait of temperament/personality, to have its special and powerful effects on self-regulation and on perception, thought, and action ( Izard et al. 2008a).

Transitions from Basic Emotions to Emotion Schemas

In early development, the first steps in the transition from basic positive emotions to positive emotion schemas consists simply of the infant using her increasing cognitive and emotion processing capacities to make connections between positive emotion feelings and positive thoughts, memories, and anticipations of people, events, and situations. Through learning and experience, the same stimuli that once elicited a basic positive emotion may become stimuli for positive emotion schemas and greater expectations (cf. Fredrickson 1998, 2007).

Basic negative emotions occur relatively more frequently in infancy than in later development. Moreover, the transition from basic negative emotions to basic negative emotion schemas and the regulatory advantage provided by their cognitive component may prove difficult and challenging. The transition from basic anger (protests) and sadness (withdrawal) of a toddler being separated from mom, to the interest-joy response of a four-year-old being dropped off at kindergarten, may involve several rather stressful times for many children.

For adults, transitions from a basic emotion to an emotion schema may start abruptly but finish smoothly and quickly. Simply sensing that the object in your path and just a step ahead of you is long, round, and moving may activate the basic emotion of fear and the accompanying high-intensity neurobiological reactions. However, if language, learning, and another 50 ms enable you to recognize and label the object as a harmless garden snake (i.e., construct an emotion schema), you might even take it gently into your hands rather than engage in extreme behavior. The concomitant change in neural and neuromotor circuits would constitute a paradigmatic transition across types and valences of emotion and emotion-related phenomena. In this case, one would make a transition from basic fear to interest-cognition-action sequences in a positive emotion schema.

EMOTIONS AND CONSCIOUSNESS

Whatever else it may be, emotion feeling is at bottom sensation. Thus emotion feelings, like other sensations, are by definition processes that are felt or at least accessible (in the broad sense of that term) in some level of consciousness. Level of cognitive development as well as top-down processes, such as attention shifting and focusing, may influence (or preclude) the registration of feeling in reflective or cognitively accessible consciousness ( Buschman & Miller 2007). When that happens, emotion feelings/experiences occur in phenomenal consciousness (or at a low level of awareness). Phenomenal consciousness of an emotion feeling, the experience itself, generally co-occurs with some level of reflective/reportable consciousness (cf. Chalmers 1996). Thus, I propose that there are usually interactions among the neural systems that support these two types of consciousness (cf. Pessoa 2008). These interactions between the two sets of neural systems enable emotion feelings to retain their functionality in influencing thought and action, even in prelingual infants ( Izard et al. 2008b).

Factors Affecting Emotion-Consciousness Relations

Emotion Feelings and Consciousness

Emotion experiences/sensations continue to be critical in the maintenance and functioning of consciousness. When trauma leads to damage or dysfunction of a sensory system, it affects the whole person, including the sense of self and of others as self-conscious. For example, when a dysfunctional visual cortex resulted in blindsight, the blindsighted person could guess rather accurately the location of objects in the environment and learn to navigate around them. Yet, she experienced her sensation-less vision as emotionless and reported that "seeing without emotion is unbearable" ( Humphrey 2006, p. 68-69). She may also think of herself as "less of a self " and one that could not feel "engaged in the 'hereness, nowness, and me-ness' of the experience of the moment" ( Humphrey 2006, p. 70). In the social world, the blind-sighted person lacks a basis for empathy and for understanding the mental states of others by simulation.

TYPES OF EMOTION AND TYPES OF CONSCIOUSNESS

The concepts of consciousness and awareness have received very little attention in contemporary psychology. With a few exceptions, the contributors to a recently edited volume on emotion and consciousness dealt with many interesting issues other than some critical ones on the nature of consciousness and its relation to emotions ( Barrett et al. 2005b). Most contributors explicitly or implicitly assumed that access or reflective consciousness was either the only kind of consciousness or the only one that mattered to psychologists (cf. Lambie & Marcel 2002, Merker 2007).

Basic Emotions and Phenomenal Consciousness

Developmental data suggest that young infants experience basic emotions ( Izard et al. 1995). Their inability to report their emotion experiences via language rules out the idea that they experience emotions in access (verbally reportable) consciousness and suggests that their emotion feelings must occur in some other level of awareness or in phenomenal consciousness. Current conceptualizations of phenomenal consciousness, however, may not explain all emotion experiences in infancy ( Izard et al. 2008b).

Emotion Feelings and Phenomenal Consciousness

Happily, an enormous amount of information processing proceeds very well in the realm of the unconscious, but I propose that the functionality of emotion feelings (that are not in access or reflective consciousness) might be explained better in terms of phenomenal or other levels of consciousness. The term "unconscious" emotion implies nonfelt emotion. It seems very difficult if not impossible to identify and explain the mediators of the effects of nonfelt or nonconscious emotion (e.g., de Gelder 2005). Much of what has been called nonconscious emotion has not met the "requirement of deliberate probing by indirect measures" ( Lambie & Marcel 2002, p. 16). Nor have data on unconscious emotions been examined in terms of the functional correlates of hypothesized emotion feelings. Such research might suggest replacing the concept of psychological unconscious with that of phenomenal consciousness or some other level of consciousness that cannot be verbally reported.

Emotion Schemas and Access Consciousness

Emotion feelings can operate in phenomenal consciousness with little or no cognitive content. This fact is easy to appreciate while remembering that phenomenal experience is the modal variety in prelingual infants and nonhuman mammals. Although prelingual infants apparently demonstrate higher levels of awareness than phenomenal consciousness, they definitely cannot exhibit reflective consciousness as traditionally defined in terms of cognitive accessibility.

Once development enables emotion experiences to become connected to higher-order cognition, children begin to link emotion feelings and concepts and to form more and more complex emotion schemas. The language associated with a given emotion feeling in particular situations becomes a tool in emotion management, self-regulation, and other executive functions ( Izard et al. 2008a).

Gains and Losses in the Evolution of Emotions and Consciousness

Darwin recognized many turns in evolution that pointed to the seeming cruelty of natural selection-life-threatening parasites, killer reptiles, and the bloody work of predators ( Dawkins 1989). He also recognized the adaptive advantages in positive emotions and their expressions in social interactions: "... the mother smiles approval, and thus encourages her children on the right path, or frowns disapproval" ( Darwin 1872/1965, p. 304). Gains related in some way to the emotions and their interactions with perception and cognition may represent the finest-and possibly most challenging-products of evolution.

A possible loss: the evolutionary empathy-sympathy exchange

Basic empathy depends mainly on neurophysiological response systems that do not require or involve the higher-order cognitive processes involved in sympathy ( Hoffman 2000). Thus, long before human evolution produced language and its accompanying cognitive prowess, a high-level of ability for empathy and empathic responding emerged in nonhuman animals ( Langer 1967/1982). This great capacity for empathy apparently accounts for the lack of con-specific predation and cannibalism among nonhuman mammals. "Among the higher animals few, if any, of the carnivores-bears, wolves, lions and other great cats-habitually prey on their own kind" ( Langer 1967/1982, Vol. 1, p. 141). They are restrained from predation, not by signals of appeasement or surrender, but by "a ready empathetic response, so common and effective that it takes no principle, moral or other, to safeguard the members of a species against each other's appetites in ordinary conditions" ( Langer 1967/1982, Vol. 1, p. 142).

The animal empathy that constitutes a safeguard against con-specific predation establishes a special kind of relationship that enables an essentially physiological transmission of the "feeling of one creature to another so it appears to the latter as its own" ( Langer 1967/1982, Vol. 1, p. 140). In contrast, as the media are wont to remind us through blow-by-blow accounts of flagrantly aggressive and ethically and morally devious behavior, humans prey on each other with considerable frequency. And such predation often leads to death and destruction, even genocide. Furthermore, although cannibalism (a total breakdown in empathy) is generally absent among higher-order nonhuman animals, it has been observed in many human cultures.

Compared to instantaneous empathy, sympathy depends in important ways on conceptual processes (including the projected costs and benefits of helping) that are notably slower and less certain of occurrence. Sympathetic responses are also more subject to top-down control (e.g., mental manipulations stemming from biases and imagined consequences) than rapid, automatic, animal empathy. Thus, sympathetic responses may often be too little and too late for the victims of disasters, some of which result from only slightly disguised human predation exemplified in transactions between rich and poor and between high- and low-status ethnic groups. Thus, a potentially grave question remains: Does the evolutionary shift in capacities for empathy and sympathy represent a net loss or a net gain?

The pros and cons of unbridled imagination

There is also some question as to whether the evolutionary increases in the power of imagination should be judged a net gain or loss in weighing the emotion-related products of evolution. In some individuals and circumstances, unbridled imagination can facilitate tragedies on a personal as well as a national and global scale. Imagination can be fueled by either positive or negative emotion feelings or the interaction of both, and in turn, it can produce a cornucopia of both positive and negative emotion stimuli and behavioral responses (cf. Langer 1967/1982). Imagination doubtless played a role in the creation of nuclear weapons and still plays a role in planning their projected uses. It is also a factor in the development of factories, products, and policies that increase global warming and the pollution of the earth and the atmosphere at a dangerous rate.

In contrast, during early ontogeny the feeling-thought patterns of unbridled imagination facilitate cognitive and social development from the first moment that the young child engages in make-believe or pretend play. In these developmental processes and throughout the life span, imagination remains part emotion feeling and part cognition. It continues to add to individual and cultural accomplishments through the creative endeavors of artists and scientists.

Thus, "In the evolution of mind, imagination is as dangerous as it is essential" ( Langer 1967/1982, Vol. 1, p. 137). Nurturing imagination through the life span with a good balance of emotion feelings and the encouragement of empathy, sympathy, and reason, and an appreciation of how these ingredients can interact and work together for the common good, ubiquitous peace, and the preservation and flourishing of the species seem equally essential.

Remarkable Gains from Linking Emotion Feelings and Language

Emotion utilization is the harnessing of an emotion's inherently adaptive motivation/feeling component in constructive affective-cognitive processes and actions ( Izard 1971, 2002, 2007a; Izard et al. 2008c; cf. Mayer & Salovey 1997). Emotion utilization involves spontaneous as well as planned actions, and it is conceptually different from direct attempts to regulate emotion or emotion-related behavior (cf. Eisenberg & Spinrad 2004). Although emotion regulation and emotion utilization are different constructs, they interact dynamically. Emotion utilization may be viewed as the optimal mode of emotion regulation, and various forms of the latter enhance the former.

It would be difficult to overestimate the significance of the civilizing and socializing effects of learning to recognize, articulate, and utilize emotion feelings constructively, not only in early development but also throughout the life span. A key process here is developing connections between feelings, words, and thoughts. Unfortunately, linking emotion feelings to maladaptive thoughts like those that characterize racism, sexism, ageism, unbridled profit motives, and plans for vengeance, revenge, or terrorism can wreak extensive havoc to individuals, ethnic groups, and all of human kind. For an abundance of evidence supporting the foregoing assertion, read history and watch or listen to any daily news program.

UNRESOLVED ISSUES AND TOPICS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH

Two unresolved issues seem to impede scientific advances in the study of consciousness and levels of awareness. The first concerns the role of phenomenal consciousness and various linguistically inaccessible levels of awareness in research on mind and behavior. The second concerns the relation of phenomenal consciousness and the psychological unconscious, their similarities and differences.

Psychologists' Neglect of Phenomenal Consciousness

A final and perhaps most worrisome reason why phenomenal consciousness is still not a major concern of psychologists is that it is conflated with the psychological "unconscious." Clearly, a vast amount of the processes of the brain and the rest of the body (blood circulation, digestion) often do occur without our awareness of them and, in normal circumstances, without direct effects on thought and action. When significant behavioral effects do occur without readily observable causes, they are often assigned to the psychological unconscious, where mechanisms are difficult to identify and explain ( Kihlstrom 1999).

Concern about types of consciousness may stimulate further thought and research about which mental processes relate to phenomenal consciousness and which are truly unconscious. Such research could look for processes that reside at a level of awareness that is unavailable via cognitive or verbal access but not necessarily via other forms of access. Several types of nonverbal behaviors reflect the operations of mental processes that clearly are not in linguistically accessible consciousness and that may reside in phenomenal consciousness ( Izard et al. 2008b; cf. Merker 2007). The lack of linguistic accessibility does not render an emotion or emotion feeling nonfunctional.

Phenomenal consciousness and other forms of linguistically inaccessible consciousness may be better concepts for psychology than is the concept of unconscious. The latter concept is notoriously vague and ill defined in the psychological literature. Dictionary definitions characterize it as not conscious as a state, without awareness, or sensation, virtually nonphysical, and thus make some uses of it very close to the domains of spookiness and Cartesian dualism.

The Psychological Unconscious: A Default Explanatory Construct?

Although there is considerable agreement on the qualities of thought processes in psychological or access (verbally reportable) consciousness, there is no consensus on the contents and processes of the unconscious (cf. Bargh & Morsella 2008). The behavior of prelingual infants suggests that it is not prudent to label all verbally unreportable processes as unconscious, a practice that may impede or misguide the search for causal processes. Better heuristics might come from the conceptualization of causal-process mechanisms operating at different levels of awareness and as accessible by multiple behaviors other than verbal report. Dividing the mind and all mental processes into two domains-conscious and unconscious-might be the greatest oversimplification in current psychological science. Moreover, misattribution of causal processes to the unconscious may open a Pandora's Box replete with blind alleys and dead ends.

Four things have contributed to psychologists' penchant for attributing causal processes to the unconscious rather than to emotion feelings, including emotion feelings in phenomenal consciousness. First, many psychologists have typically looked for nonemotion mediators to explain changes in cognition and action. Second, emotion feelings (and their roles in influencing cognitive processes) are notoriously difficult to identify and describe in words ( Creighton 1921, Langer 1967/1982). However, infants and young children experience emotions and respond to them in meaningful ways long before they can label or describe emotions ( Izard et al. 2008b). Such evidence points to the utility of assessing emotion feelings by measuring their functional correlates. Third, many psychologists remain reluctant to attribute to emotion a significant causal role in ordinary as well as critical thinking, decision making, and action despite a growing body of evidence to the contrary (e.g., Bechara et al. 2000, DeMartino et al. 2006, Lerner & Tiedens 2006, Miller 2006, Naqvi et al. 2006). Fourth, many psychological scientists tend to think that emotions are typically brief and that emotion feelings are always sufficiently intense to grab and hold attention. Actually, plausible arguments suggest that emotion feelings are phenomena that vary on a very wide dimension of intensity while retaining their functional/causal properties ( Izard 2007a).

Emerging Issues: Continuous Emotion, Memes, and the Mirror Neuron System

Continuous Emotion-Cognition Interaction

The notion that some emotion or emotion-cognition interaction is continuous in phenomenal or access consciousness or some level of awareness is not new (e.g., Bacon 1620/1968). The hypothesis implicit in that idea may prove difficult to falsify. Yet, without the attribution of causal power to emotion (feeling) and the concept of continual emotion-cognition interaction, we may have no way to explain selective attention. And selective attention is a necessary factor in the simplest forms of exploration and learning as well as in higher-order cognition and sequences of organized behavior.

Memes and Emotions

Memes are one of several epigenetic mechanisms that challenge the dominance of DNA as the central life force (cf. Noble 2006). Natural selection may operate on not only genes, DNA, or RNA. It can also act on "replicant" units (memes) that consist of cognition and action patterns, things other than biological structures that can be transmitted through imitative learning ( Dawkins 1989). Apparently, memes emerged to serve unique adaptive functions in social interactions.

Because emotions are contagious ( Hatfield et al. 1993, Tomkins 1962), memes that are essentially emotion schemas can propagate profusely. They can do so for two reasons. First, such schemas have the attention-grabbing and motivational power of an emotion ( Youngstrom & Izard 2008). Second, they are highly functional phenomena independent of their relations to biological fitness and survival (cf. Aunger 2002, Blackmore 1999, Distin 2004). The idea that an emotion schema might form a replicant unit opens another door to investigations of the transfer of adaptive as well as maladaptive patterns of emotion, cognition, and action within and across generations.

Mirror Neuron Systems, Emotions, and Empathy

The possibility that the MNS and associated emotion systems mediate the generation and propagation of memes suggests the fruitfulness of studying memes that can be clearly identified as ESMs. ESMs should prove plentiful because they have an enormous appeal to forces that generate and propagate memes. The emotion component of an ESM has the motivational power to influence perception, grab attention, generate more emotion-cognition structures, and influence action. ESMs may constitute a major factor that shapes consciousness, personality and social functioning, and culture ( Youngstrom & Izard 2008).

CONCLUDING REMARKS

Emotion research has increased exponentially since Tomkins's (1962, 1963) landmark volumes helped bring a nascent emotion science into an unevenly matched competition with the forces of the contemporaneous revolution that produced cognitive science. The two disciplines are becoming increasingly collaborative and progressing toward becoming one. As the realization of this exciting prospect proceeds, great challenges await scientists who will seek to understand how the brain assigns weights or significance to emotion and cognition (which assumedly retain distinct functions) as they are integrated or mingled in different periods of development, personalities, and contexts. They will find equally interesting challenges in research on ways to facilitate these processes to gain adaptive advantages, bolster constructive and creative endeavors, and prevent destructive and maladaptive behavior.

SUMMARY POINTS

1. Emotion feelings are a phase of neurobiological activity and the key psychological/motivational aspect of emotion. They constitute the primary motivational systems for human behavior.

2. Emotion feelings are prime factors in the evolution, organization, and operations of consciousness and the different levels of awareness.

3. The ability to symbolize feelings and put them into words provides a powerful tool for emotion regulation, influencing emotion-cognition relations, and developing high-level social skills.

4. The term "emotion" has defied definition mainly because it is multifaceted and not a unitary phenomenon or process. Use of the unqualified term "emotion" makes for misunderstandings, contradictions, and confusions in theory and research.

5. Basic emotions, emotion schemas, and emotion-schema memes are distinctly different in terms of their origin, content, causes, and effects.

6. Transitions from basic emotions to emotion schemas and emotion-schema memes are major milestones in development and in achieving social and emotion competence.

7. The psychological unconscious is an ill-defined and potentially misleading term. There is no consensus regarding its contents and functions. The concept of levels of awareness may provide a better bridge to understanding human mentality and brain/mind processes.

8. Emotion utilization is the harnessing of an emotion's inherently adaptive emotion motivation/feeling component in constructive affective-cognitive processes and actions. Symbolization and effective communication of emotion feelings play a key role in emotion utilization, particularly in real or simulated social interactions.

9. The concept of emotion-cognition interaction, well validated in neuroscience and behavioral research, suggests that the presence of functionally distinct features in the interactants would increase both the flexibility and generality of the resultant processes.

FUTURE ISSUES

1. Experimental validation of the hypothesis that the feeling component of some emotion or emotion schema is continuous at some level of awareness should prove an interesting challenge for future research. So should studies designed to verify the hypothesis that interest or an interest schema is the default emotion or emotion-cognition interaction.

2. Insights on the early development and life-span growth of emotion-schema memes should add substantially to our understanding of the contributions of social and cultural factors in mental processes and behavior.

3. Distinguishing between emotion regulation and emotion utilization may provide new insights on the independence and interdependence of these two constructs.

4. Determining how the emotion and cognitive components of emotion schemas and emotion-schema memes integrate or mingle in the brain should provide leads for translational research. The findings from such research should contribute to preventive interventions that facilitate the development of emotion and social competence and the prevention of psychopathology.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

Work on this article was supported by National Institute of Mental Health grants R21 MH068443 and R01 MH080909.

Glossary

DET

differential emotions theory

Mirror neuron system (MNS)

is assumed to consist of neurons that fire both when one acts and when one observes the same action performed by another; neurons that "mirror" the behavior of another

Memes

behavioral (cognitive, emotional, action) units that can propagate (be readily copied) and become subject to natural selection

Emotion schemas

emotion-cognition interactions/structures that generate feeling-thought experiences and behavioral tendencies that range from momentary processes to trait-like phenomena (e.g., anger schemas, interest schemas)

Emotion feeling

a phase of neurobiological activity that is experienced as motivational and informational and that influences thought and action, a felt cognition, or action tendency

Levels of awareness

levels of consciousness, ranging from phenomenal consciousness to access (verbally reportable) and reflective consciousness, which support the processes in higher-order cognition-emotion schemas

Emotion-cognition interactions

dynamic neuropsychological processes that determine the relative significance of emotion and cognition in planning, decision making, and actions

Phenomenal consciousness

a level of awareness in which objects, events, and emotion feelings can register and remain verbally unreportable experiences. Emotion feelings in phenomenal consciousness retain their functionality

Access consciousness

a level of awareness that includes verbally reportable content

Entrainment

harmonious synchronization of neural processes

Individuation

those processes through which differentiated components tend to become a more unified whole

Basic emotions

emotions that organize and motivate rapid virtually automatic yet malleable responses that are critical in meeting immediate challenges to survival or well-being

Emotion-schema memes (ESMs)

epigenetic emotion-cognition processes derived from mimicry of emotion-expressive cognition and action and endowed with motivation for influencing development and behavior

Footnotes
DISCLOSURE STATEMENT
The author is not aware of any biases that might be perceived as affecting the objectivity of this review.

LITERATURE CITED

Izard C, Stark K, Trentacosta C, Schultz D. Beyond emotion regulation: emotion utilization and adaptive functioning. Child Dev. Perspect. 2008c In press. [[PMC free article] [PubMed] Google Scholar]

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Emotion Theory and Research: Highlights, Unanswered Questions, and Emerging Issues

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Emotion feeling is a phase of neurobiological activity, the key component of emotions and emotion-cognition interactions. Emotion schemas, the most frequently occurring emotion experiences, are dynamic emotion-cognition interactions that may consist of momentary/ situational responding or enduring traits of personality that emerge over developmental time.