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Forms and Functions of Emotions: Matters of EmotionCognition Interactions

Carroll E. Izard
Emotion Review 2011 3: 371
DOI: 10.1177/1754073911410737

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Forms and Functions of Emotions: Matters

of EmotionCognition Interactions

Emotion Review
Vol. 3, No. 4 (October 2011) 371378
The Author(s) 2011
ISSN 1754-0739
DOI: 10.1177/1754073911410737
er.sagepub.com

Carroll E. Izard

Department of Psychology, University of Delaware, USA

Abstract
This article clarifies my current and seemingly ever-changing position on issues relating to emotions. The position derives from
my differential emotions theory and it changes with new empirical findings and with insights from my own and others thinking
and writing. The theory distinguishes between first-order emotions and emotion schemas. For example, it proposes that first-order
negative emotions are attributable mainly to infants and young children in distress and to older individuals in emergency or
highly challenging situations. Emotion schemas are defined as emotion feelings interacting with cognition in motivating the
decision making and actions of everyday life.

Keywords
cognition, emotion, functions, interactions

I have never conceived of myself as a basic emotion

theorist. The term basic emotion does not appear in the
indexes of any of my three early books on emotions. Yet others have mistakenly (in my view) identified my conceptual
framework as basic emotion theory (e.g., Barrett, 2006;
Scherer, 2009). However, I have identified a few emotions as
basic in the usual sense of that wordfundamental, forming
a base. For example, I see the emotions of interest and enjoyment as fundamental to the formation and maintenance of
social ties. I have also identified the criteria that I used in
defining such a category, but I think that what I have written
about basic emotions is at most a small part of my conceptual
frameworkdifferential emotions theory (DET). To clarify
my position, I recently highlighted the distinction between
basic emotions and emotion schemas (Izard, 2007, 2009)
and noted that my work has focused primarily on the latter.
After infancy, emotion schemas (not the so-called basic emotions) are the emotions of everyday life. Most contemporary
emotion researchers actually focus on emotion schemas but
they often identify their subject matter simply as an emotion
or a set of emotions.
I posit quite different functions and characteristics for basic
emotions and emotion schemas. I also recognize within each
type both positive and negative emotion experiences, with the

qualification that positive and negative are arbitrary in that

any emotion might motivate adaptive or maladaptive cognition
and action. I also propose that for reasonably comfortable and
secure people living in a peaceful culture, basic or first-order
emotions (which are structurally and dynamically simpler due
largely to the absence of complex cognition) operate mainly in
infancy and childhood. After sufficient cognitive development,
emotion schemasemotion feeling in interactions with higher
order cognition (beyond perception)become the predominant
source of emotion experiences in mental processes. Emotion
schemas are fundamentally motivational, and they typically
represent explicit or implicit affectivecognitive plans for
thought and action.

Basic Emotions
I have always thought of emotions as being fundamental to
human nature (Izard, 1971, 1977, 1991), but only recently did I
identify a few emotions (interest, joy, sadness, anger, fear) that
may be called basic for the following reasons. They (a) have
a simpler structure by virtue of the absence of complex cognition, (b) have more specificity of functions, (c) are largely
derived through bio-evolutionary processes, (d) continue to
retain relatively more evolutionarily derived features (e.g.,

Author note: I am very grateful to Fran Haskins for her help in preparing this article for submission.
Corresponding author: Carroll E. Izard, Department of Psychology, University of Delaware, 108 Wolf Hall, Newark, DE 19716, USA. Email: izard@psych.udel.edu

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372Emotion Review Vol. 3 No. 4

expressive/social signals), (e) emerge earlier in ontogeny than

do emotion schemas, and (f) constitute a set of motivational
processes important to survival and well-being (Izard, 2007,
2009). They stand in contrast to complex emotional phenomena,
such as jealousy and envy, which may include several interacting emotions. Moreover, first-order emotion feelings may serve
as building blocks for many, though by no means all, other
emotions. A central feature of my current theory is the clear
distinction between first-order emotions and emotion schemas.
First-order emotions require only the minimal cognitive processes of perceiving and imaging in order to trigger a rapid and
sometimes automatic action. These processes may often occur
without reportable awareness, particularly in early development.
In contrast, emotion schemas always involve interactions
among emotion feelings and higher order cognitionthoughts,
strategies, and goals that complement and guide responding to
the emotion experience.
All emotions, first-order emotions and emotion schemas,
probably have at least one evolutionarily determined feature: the feeling component. The feeling component that is
part of every emotion cannot be learned. One person cannot
teach another how it feels to be happy or sad. Thus the
capacity for experiencing discrete emotion feelings must
have emerged over a long period of evolution (cf. discussion of qualia by Edelman, 2006; discussion of the evolution of feeling by Langer, 1967/1982). The term discrete
emotion refers to a single emotion like anger in response to
insult. In contrast, one might experience multiple interacting emotions on an occasion, like graduation which may
signal a significant accomplishment and separation from
classmates. For most people living in peaceful cultures,
first-order negative emotions have a low base rate. Most
situations of everyday life are not highly threatening and
thus do not call for the more or less automatic stereotypical
(first-order-emotion) response patterns that are needed in
emergencies. Frequent occurrence of basic negative emotions in normal circumstances may signal the presence of a
mental health problem (anxiety or depressive disorder) and
the need for therapeutic intervention.

Emotion Schemas
Except for the period of early development and the relatively
rare occasions of emergencies, highly threatening or challenging situations, emotion schemas (not first-order emotions) are
typical of everyday life. Many contemporary emotion scientists
refer to the phenomena they study simply as emotion and
often, but not always, provide a clear operational definition that
identifies the stimulus. When asked to define the general term
emotion they give widely different definitions (Izard, 2010).
Although I have modified, expanded, and attempted to
clarify my theory several times (sometimes in response to critiques), I have never thought of it as basic emotion theory. I
have always identified it as differential emotions theory (DET;
Izard, 1971, 1977, 1991, 2007, 2009).

Differential Emotions Theory

DET is a set of principles and hypotheses primarily about the
motivational and regulatory functions of discrete emotions.
A goal for DET is to modify and update its principles so that
they remain in accord with the new findings and insights of
emotion researchers and theorists. Indeed, I am grateful to those
who have challenged my position from time to time. Often they
motivated me to rethink and clarify aspects of DET, as did the
editors invitation to write the present article. I suggest four
sources for further information and documentation relating to
my current theory and my answers to the editors questions that
framed this article (Izard, 2002, 2007; Izard et al., 2008).
Question 1: How does a basic emotion differ from simply a
discrete emotion?
Although (DET) is primarily about emotion schemas, I hypothesize distinctly different forms of emotions including one that I
have recently and somewhat reluctantly characterized as basic
(Izard, 2007). I think first-order emotions is a better and less
controversial descriptor than basic emotions (cf. Panksepp,
2007). It should also be less of an attractor for what may prove
to be fruitless debate and controversy. The term first-order
emphasizes that the emotion does not have a component consisting of cognitive processes like analytic and deliberative
thinking and decision making or memories formed by such
processes.

Basic or First-Order Emotions and Emotion Schemas

During early development, under normative conditions, firstorder positive emotions are much more prevalent and play a
much larger role in motivation and adaptive behavior than do
first-order negative emotions. From birth, the roles of firstorder positive and first-order negative emotions are quite different and these two forms of emotions change enormously and
differentially over developmental time (Izard et al., 1995).
First-order positive emotions may remain key factors during all
periods of life as they influence initial assessment of people and
events and the way we think and behave in both solitary and
social situations.
In contrast, first-order negative emotions in older children
and adults operate mainly, if not only, in situations perceived as
emergencies that typically require rapid and more or less automatic responses to highly threatening or challenging events.
Because of the infrequency of such events in the lives of
healthy people living in a peaceful culture, first-order negative
emotions are infrequent. After the infancy period, the activation
of first-order negative emotions in ordinary life situations may
represent overreaction or unregulated emotion arousal. Thus
first-order negative emotions decrease as normal development
increases childrens self-regulatory capacities, and particularly
their cognitive ability to distinguish between real and apparent
dangers, regulate emotion experiences, and avoid or cope
effectively with real ones.

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Izard Forms and Functions of Emotions 373

First-order emotions have a set of neural and bodily/expressive

components and a bio-evolutionarily fixed feeling/motivational
component. Vytal and Hamann (2010) have identified specific
neural correlates for discrete emotions. Though responses to
first-order emotion-eliciting stimuli tend to be rapid, automatic,
and outside of reportable consciousness, this response pattern
can be influenced in three ways. First, continuing perceptual
analysis and recruitment of higher order cognitive processes
may change the initial concept of the stimulus. For example,
further perceptual analysis may determine that the object in
your path through the woods is a crooked tree limb and not a
viper as initially perceived. Second, there are wide individual
differences in temperament/personality factors that determine
emotional reactivity. Highly reactive individuals may be more
likely to experience first-order emotions and make relatively
more rapid automatic responses to things perceived as negative
emotion stimuli. Third, perceiving what may be threatening in
some circumstances may seem harmless in another context.
For example, seeing a tiger contained in a concrete and metal
cage at the zoo elicits different effects than would seeing one
poised and ready to strike just a few steps ahead in a forested
wilderness of northeast India.
Yet whenever a given first-order emotion (e.g., anger, fear)
does occur, the feeling component of that emotion may vary in
intensity but is always the same in quality. I hypothesize that bioevolutionary processes are locked in the feeling component of
each discrete emotion because (a) feeling is the essential aspect
of its motivational and regulatory functions (which are necessary
for effective adaptation), and (b) feeling cannot be learned.
In addition to their three components, first-order emotions
have six other characteristics: (a) as previously noted, they
derive from bio-evolutionary processes; (b) they are typically
responses to ecologically valid stimuli or their conditioned
counterparts, but they may be influenced by temperament/
personality, cultural evolution, memes, and other epigenetic
processes; (c) they are typically activated by a simple perceptual process (e.g., seeing a viper in your path) that does not
require complex appraisals or higher order cognition, and they
often operate rapidly and more or less automatically; (d) their
unique feeling/motivational component is a phase of an evolutionarily derived neurobiological process (cf. Langer, 1967/1982);
(e) each first-order emotion has unique regulatory functions that
modulate cognition and action; (f) in contrast to cyclical affective states or processes like hunger, thirst, and sexual arousal,
emotions provide continually available sources of motivation and
information that guide cognition and action (Izard, 1971, 2007;
cf. Tomkins, 1962, 1963). The adaptive nature of emotions
depends on their inherent motivational characteristics that drive
cognition and behavior appropriate to events and situations of
daily life.
The term first-order emotion houses two very different types
of emotions, usually called positive (usually beneficial) and
negative (usually disruptive). Those called positive emotions
generally, but not always, result in positive effects. Those called
negative emotions generally, but not always, result in negative
as well as positive effects. Since the beginning of the emotion

revolution in the 1970s, most of the relevant research focused

on negative emotions.
First-order positive emotions and first-order negative emotions have quite different characteristics. Because first-order
negative emotions are responses to a limited number of ecologically valid negative stimuli and their conditioned counterparts, natural circumstances that elicit them are relatively rare
in most neighborhoods of contemporary peaceful societies.
Moreover, once a stimulus/situation activates a first-order
emotion in individuals who have passed the period of early
development, it typically and immediately recruits higher order
cognition (mental processes beyond perceptual activity). The
addition of higher order cognition immediately transforms the
first-order emotion into an emotioncognition interaction or
emotion schema. The higher order cognition replaces a firstorder emotions defining characteristicsrapidity and automaticity. The higher order cognition becomes part of the ongoing
processes of the emotion and begins changing and influencing
its neural and expressive components.
In sum, given the problem of defining basicness, the term
basic emotion like the stand-alone term emotion will probably never have a widely accepted definition (cf. Izard, 2010). One
of the greatest challenges in emotion science is to specify clearly
what is meant by the terms emotion, basic or first-order
emotions, and emotion schemas or higher order emotions.
Except for work with infants, young children, and animals,
first-order emotions have received very little attention by contemporary researchers. Even if a conditioned fear stimulus
activates a first-order emotion, often the cognizance of the environmental surrounds would quickly transform it to an emotion
schema. The deficiency in the human literature on first-order
emotions is due in part to difficulties in simulating ecologically
valid stimuli/situations and eliciting first-order negative emotions in the laboratory, while obtaining appropriate measures of
cognitive, behavioral, and neural processes. Nevertheless,
research on first-order emotions, and most particularly the
developmental transition from first-order emotions to higher
order emotions or emotion schemas, should be a significant
part of both developmental and emotion science (Izard, 2007).
A possible resolution to this problem might simply entail providing an operational definition for the term emotion which
would clarify whether the target of the study or experiment is a
first-order emotion or an emotion schema.
Question 2: What is your list of basic emotions? Are all emotions basic, or just some? If some, how do you distinguish
basic from nonbasic emotions? And what is the relation of
nonbasic to basic emotions?
I hypothesize that the following are first-order emotions, when
they do not include higher order cognition: (a) interest,
(b)enjoyment/happiness/contentment, (c) sadness, (d) anger,
(e) disgust, and (f) fear. There is some evidence indicating that
contempt also meets the criteria for first-order emotions. I am
ambivalent about giving contempt status as a first-order emotion.
That reluctance may have been a cause of my inadvertently

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374Emotion Review Vol. 3 No. 4

omitting it from the list in a recent article (Izard, 2007).

Contempt based on racism or other forms of prejudice is a
despicable and dangerous emotion. Contempt is especially dangerous when it becomes a part of the hostility triadanger, disgust, contempt (Izard, 1977). I think contempt, particularly in its
role as a part of the hostility triad is a significant factor in making
humans rank highest among all species in intraspecific aggression, including ethnic conflicts, internecine wars, and genocide.
After infancy and early childhood, first-order emotions are
experienced infrequently. Though experienced infrequently by
mentally and physically healthy adults, first-order emotions are
key factors in early development. As already noted, they also
serve as building blocks for some (but far from all) emotion
schemas. First-order emotions remain quite functional throughout the lifespan in the face of ecologically valid stimuli and their
conditioned counterparts, particularly when they are experienced in their natural context. After the period of early development, emotion schemas constitute the principal motivational
and regulatory systems for human behavior.
Learning appropriate labels for emotions enables more efficient and effective feelingcognition interactions. Increased
emotioncognition interaction facilitates the formation of emotion schemas that represent ways of engaging others and aspects
of the environment. For example, an emotion schema may contain knowledge about the manipulation of toys as well as ways to
share them with others. An infant smiling and offering a favorite
toy to a parent or older sibling probably involves the infants
memory of the association between toy play and the feelings of
interest and enjoyment. In any case, increased emotion knowledge (understanding of the expressions, feelings, and functions of
discrete emotions) led to increased social skills and the avoidance
of behavior problems in children at risk of psychopathology
(Finlon et al., 2010; Izard et al., 2008). Consistent with these
results, Lieberman et al. (2007) showed that for adults, simply
labeling a negative-emotion-expression photograph decreased
activity in the amygdala (where decreased activation reflects
decreased emotion arousal) and increased activity in the orbito
frontal cortex (which reflects increased activation of cognitive
processes that participate in emotion regulation).
The feeling component is the key motivational aspect of
emotion schemas. The cognitive/schema aspect of a higher
order emotion emerges from symbolic processes activated and
motivated by a feeling state. The cognitive component of emotion schemas ranges in complexity from a smiling infants
image of her mothers face to highly sophisticated patterns of
thought. Repetitive patterns of these feelingthought processes
may, depending on the valence of the emotion feeling and the
quality of the associated cognition, become part of a personality
trait like conscientiousness or part of a psychopathological condition such as conduct disorder or depression (Izard, 1972;
Izard, Youngstrom, Fine, Mostow, & Trentacosta, 2006).
Neural systems for emotions and for cognition are as little as
three synapses apart (Lewis, 2005; Pessoa, 2008; Phelps, 2006).
Thus when an emotion is activated, feelingcognition interactions can and typically do occur at some level within a few
milliseconds. The interactions of the affective feeling with

higher order cognition would terminate a first-order emotion, a

predominantly emotion-focused mental state. Once there is
interaction between emotion feeling and higher order cognition,
the resulting emotion schema can include self-control mechanisms that soon become operative. I hypothesize that in addition
to more purely cognitive controls, emotion schemas contain
emotion-powered behavior or self-control mechanisms that
derive primarily from the regulatory functions of emotions (e.g.,
anger moderates fear).

Discrete Emotions
Any emotion, first-order emotion as well emotion schemas, may
be a discrete emotion. Yet discrete emotions frequently interact
(e.g., interest and joy in play and social interactions, and sadness and anger or shame and guilt in depression). Apparently,
bio-evolutionary processes provided ample neural systems for a
wide variety of discrete emotions and their interactions with
each other and with cognition and behavior (cf. Edelman, 2006,
on qualia). There is some evidence to support the idea that
highly complex emotional phenomena like anxiety and depression involve a variable set of interacting discrete emotion schemas anchored by fear and sadness respectively (Izard, 1972).
The contrary assumptions that emotions are not discrete or that
they form blends of feeling states seem untenable because that
would rule out their specific and directional influences on cognition and action. The blending of two or more discrete emotions might seriously compromise the unique functionality of
each. In sum, all emotions are discrete, yet they are highly interactive with each other as well as with cyclical affects (e.g.,
hunger, sexual arousal) and with perceptual and higher order
cognitive processes including deliberative thought. Some of
what is attributed to emotion in current research is probably
the result of emotion in interactions with other emotions and
other nonemotional affects as well as with cognition. These
interactions may make it difficult to ascertain the specific emotion that is prominent in consciousness at a particular time. They
may also make a dimensional approach to the study of the
effects of emotion processes a strategy that focuses on identifiable patterns of emotions (e.g., sadness and anger in depression,
or fear, shame, and guilt in anxiety disorders) more attractive
than a plan that focuses on single discrete emotions.
First-order emotion responses are typically activated rapidly,
automatically, and largely nonconsciously (outside reportable
awareness) in response to a limited set of stimuli that have a
limited presence in contemporary peaceful cultures. They can
be activated by minimal perceptual/evaluative processes and
without participation of the neural systems underlying higher
order cognition (LeDoux, 1996, 2009; Merker, 2007). In contrast to first-order emotions, emotion schemas depend on continual interaction among the neural substrates of both emotions
and higher order cognition.
Question 3: Does the existence of a basic emotion depend on
the existence of a central organizing mechanism (something
like an affect program) or can a basic emotion be simply a
patterned response?

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Izard Forms and Functions of Emotions 375

Unlike Tomkins (1962, 1963, 1991), I do not use the term affect
program as a descriptor of processes in the activation of a
first-order emotion experience. It seems too restrictive, tending to imply fixed emotion responding with little or no flexibility. However, I do maintain that each of the small set of emotions
that I have called basic or first-order have dedicated or at least
partially dedicated neural systems that are involved in their activation and interactions (Izard, 2007; cf. Panksepp, 2007, 2008).
First-order emotion response systems do not always run
their course in an inevitable lockstep fashion, as might be
suggested by the term affect program. As mentioned above,
first-order emotion responses that often occur rapidly and automatically can be modified via interaction with cognitive and
affectivecognitive control systems which include the processing
of environmental information. For example, a monkey who
receives a painful bite on its rear end might automatically turn
toward the perpetrator in an attack mode, then quickly walk away
on discovering that the pain was delivered by the alpha monkey.
It seems reasonable to assume that such an emotioncognition
interaction would change a first-order emotion to an emotion schema that would have a relatively simple higher order component.
Question 4: In everyday discourse, emotions cause certain
behaviors (fear makes us flee, makes our heart race, and
makes us think irrationally, and so on). In your theory, does a
first-order emotion have such causal powers? Which powers?
My answer to the first of the foregoing questions is different for
different periods of development and for different first-order
positive versus first-order negative emotions. It concerns the
effects of emotions on self and others. For example, a smile
from mom or from almost anyone is highly likely to evoke a
smile in a 2- to 6-month-old infant who is comfortable and alert
(Izard et al., 1995). In turn, an infants smile typically begets a
smile in return and increases her chances of additional social
interactions and nurturance. It seems reasonable to assume that
this sort of stimulusfirst-order emotion response evolved
because it provides the infant an adaptive advantage. In a later
developmental period, a young childs smile when accompanied by persuasive pleading for cookies and ice cream may
often fail to get an assenting smile from a mom who is conscious of the effects of too many sweets on childrens health.
There is merit in the idea that declarations of specific cause
effect relations in human behavior are arbitrary. Usually there
are unidentified antecedent causes including individual differences in temperament/personality. After the period of early
infancy, the maxim of arbitrary causes holds on many occasions
where first-order emotions may be among the possible causes
of various outcomes. Even in early infancy, genetic factors
(e.g., temperament) as well as surrounding context and specific
stimuli within it influence the activation and processes of
first-order emotions and their effects.
After early infancy, a first-order emotion does not inevitably
cause any behavior change. All emotion-related causal processes
are probabilistic. Just as there is generality and flexibility in
emotion responding to events and situations (Izard, 2004), there

is also generality and flexibility in emotionbehavior relations.

One can respond adaptively to joy or sadness in many different
ways. Such flexibility in emotion responding is highly adaptive
for humans. Lack of such flexibility would jeopardize the adaptive capacities of emotions. Lockstep emotionaction sequences
may often prove maladaptive (Izard, 2004; Izard & Malatesta,
1987). Natural selection of even a moderately high number of
lockstep emotionaction sequences might well have changed or
prematurely ended the course of human evolution.
In sum, during infancy and early childhood and before the
development of a wide range of effective emotion regulatory/
control systems there is greater likelihood of the occurrence of
stereotypical behavior in response to a first-order emotion experience. Though first-order emotions do not always cause a
specific response even in infancy (Izard, 2004), they may significantly increase the probability of the occurrence of a particular behavior. In addition to a young infants seemingly
automatic smile in response to anothers smile, almost all
infants from 2 to 18 months of age responded to the pain of
inoculation with pain and anger expressions (Izard, Hembree, &
Huebner, 1987). The percentage of postinoculation time for
anger expressions increased with age as the percentage of time
for pain expressions decreased. Anger is often associated with
acute pain, and high-trait anger-out episodes related significantly with increased responsiveness to experimental and clinical pain stimuli (Bruehl, Chung, & Burns, 2006). As indicated
in the first part of this article, I have discussed and documented
the proposition that first-order emotions like emotion schemas (or indeed all emotions) have motivational and regulatory
functions (Izard, 2007). I propose that these motivational and
regulatory functions are critical to socioemotional development, and to constructive cognitive and action processes that
occur when the individual utilizes emotion motivation adaptively. Except for the period of early development and situations like being stranded by sleet and snow on a busy highway,
the motivational and regulatory functions of emotion schemas
is a far broader and challenging topic for research than the topic
of basic or first-order negative emotions (cf. Izard, 2007,
2009). An exception may be research of the occurrence and
effects of frequently occurring first-order emotion experiences in a combat zone in war time. It seems quite likely that
recurring exposure to life-threatening situations would lead to
repeated first-order negative emotion experiences that could
lead to severe mental health problems such as posttraumatic
stress disorders. In sum, emotion feelings are among the causal
processes of an individuals perceptions, cognition, and action.
Question 5: In what sense are basic emotions basic?
Specifically, please touch on the questions about what makes
a basic emotion basic: must the emotion be evolutionarily
shaped? Biologically prewired? Psychologically primitive? A
building block of other emotions? All of the above?
It seems impossible to give a definitive answer to the first of the
foregoing questions, given our reservations about the nature of
basicness. In any case, I have already noted that certain

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376Emotion Review Vol. 3 No. 4

emotions may be considered basic or first-order in that they are

fundamental or foundational in human development and social
communication. As indicated in my answers to preceding questions, the constituents of first-order emotions are shaped largely
by evolution, but not completely. They are not fixed in stone. As
noted earlier, first-order emotions may be influenced by contextual factors such as the presence of a caregiver during challenging situations in early development. Still, first-order positive
emotion expressions like the simple act of smiling can give
infants and young children a jump start in developing social
skills that enhance parents tendencies and efforts to provide
nurturance and in forming strong social bonds as in a secure
parentchild attachment (Shiller, Izard, & Hembree, 1986). The
young infants indefatigable smile is a powerful social attractor.
These aspects of first-order or early-appearing emotions
provide a rich area for highly significant developmental and
clinical-science research.
I propose that first-order positive and first-order negative
emotions are psychologically primitive in some but not all
senses of that term. They have several characteristics that qualify
them as psychological primitives: (a) some first-order emotions
probably emerged early in the evolution of nonhuman primates;
(b) they are the earliest (and perhaps only) kind of noncyclical
affective processes in phylogeny and ontogeny that serve motivational and regulatory functions. In this respect, they differ
from hunger and thirst which are traditionally considered as
drives that increase and decrease in relation to consumption and
time (Izard, 2002, 2007); (c) they are structurally the simplest
kind of emotions. They consist primarily of neurobiological,
expressive, and feeling components. They do not involve higher
order cognition, only simple perceptual and emotion processes.
Evidence continues to support the hypothesis that first-order
emotions are products of biological-evolutionary processes (cf.
Merker, 2007). Human infants are born with the neural circuitry
for the positive emotions of interest and enjoyment and the capacity to develop the circuitry for experiencing and expressing
numerous other emotions. Later developing emotions include
shame and guilt as well as the first-order emotion of contempt, all
of which depend on the development of cognitive abilities related
to self-concept and selfother distinctions or comparisons.
A number of recent studies support the proposition that several emotions and emotion expressions are not products of
social learning but are inborn or develop in the first year of life.
Young infants have considerable capacity to distinguish among
and respond differentially to various emotion expressions and
emotion stimuli. Grossman, Striano, and Friederici (2007) demonstrated remarkable changes in event-related potentials (ERPs)
during emotion processing of happiness or anger expression by
7- and 12-month-old infants. Seven-month-olds showed heightened sensitivity to happiness expressions, whereas 12-montholds resembled adults in their heightened sensitivity to anger
expressions. Several researchers have presented arguments and
data supporting the idea that certain emotions are products of
evolution (hman & Mineka, 2001; Panksepp, 2007, 2008).
Minagawa-Kawai et al. (2009) found activity in the orbitofrontal
cortex of 9- to 13-month-old infants that was specific to

viewing their mothers smile. Moreover, in adults, language

(active verbs) referring to emotion expressions elicit the same
muscle activity (facial electromyography) as do visual stimuli
(Foroni & Semin, 2009). These phenomena seem impossible to
explain in terms of social learning.
First-order emotions are in a sense building blocks for some
(but by no means all) complex emotions or emotion schemas.
For example, the first-order emotion of anger can serve as a
building block for emotion schemas that have anger feeling as
their motivational component. The developmental process of
connecting higher-order cognitive processes (e.g., thinking) to
first-order emotion feelings is one way of increasing the repertoire of emotion schemas. Without first-order emotions as building blocks, the development of emotion schemas and all that
they bring in the way of motivational and regulatory systems
would be thwarted (cf. Landau, 2010).
Infants begin to move beyond first-order emotion responding
as they develop more complex imagery. A little later, toddlers
and young (3- to 5-year-old) children take a giant leap toward
self-control and self-sufficiency as they become more proficient
in using language to label emotion experiences and in symbolizing aspects of emotion and social relations in communications
with self (in make-believe play or fantasy) and with others (cf.
Singer, 1995).
There are some emotions that play a role in child and adolescent development that apparently do not emerge through firstorder emotion building blocks. Examples are shame, guilt, and
contempt. Yet I have hypothesized that the capacity to experience the feeling state of any emotion (first-order emotion or
emotion schema) is determined by bio-evolutionary processes.
Epigenetic factors, cultural evolution, and learning cannot
account for the differential feeling states of different emotions.
Barrett (2006) has challenged this proposition and hypothesized
that different emotions (apparently including emotion-feeling
states) derive from conceptual processes. I agree that cognitive
processes ranging from rapid appraisals to deliberative thought
can activate and influence emotions. However, I propose that
the processes of activating emotions and the processes of determining the quality of emotion feelings are quite different and
that the latter is dependent on evolution.
In arguing for the evolutionarily determined subjective experiences of different discrete emotions, I have repeatedly proposed that it is impossible to teach a child how to feel happy or
sad. No one has yet offered evidence to the contrary. Although
young children can learn that certain thoughts (as well as certain
events and situations) can activate a particular emotion and that
other thoughts and events might activate another emotion (Izard
et al., 2008), they cannot learn how to feel a discrete emotion.
Though emotion feelings are a product of evolution, there are
wide individual differences in experiencing them.
Question 6: How are basic emotions differentiated one from
another?
They have some different subbrain and neural circuits (Pelletier
et al., 2003), different motivational and regulatory functions,

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Izard Forms and Functions of Emotions 377

and they are often (though not always) associated with different
expressive behaviors and actions (broadly defined to include
cognitive and motor activity). If the cognitive activity moves
beyond perceptual processes to higher order cognition, the firstorder emotion is transformed into an emotion schema or an
interaction of emotion feeling and higher order cognition.
Each first-order emotion, as well as each of the other discrete emotions, has a distinct feeling component (subjective
experience). Although the feeling is always the same qualitatively for each emotion, the emotion-related expressive behaviors and actions can be influenced by events and context. These
expressive behaviors and actions provide feedback to the neural
circuits of the emotion feeling which, depending on the context,
may be attenuated or amplified.
Question 7: If your list of basic emotions is a set of English
terms, how do you respond to the claim that some languages
lack equivalent terms for those emotions but include emotion terms that differ in meaning from English terms? What
is the relation between your basic emotions and the everyday
folk language people use to talk about their emotions?
I recognize that lists of first-order emotions may vary among
theorists and across cultures. I think that culture and cultural
evolution may have a real effect in determining peoples
acknowledged and operating repertoire of emotions and on how
they are named. I think that these differences might diminish
or even disappear over time when an individual experiences
complete acculturation into a new and different culture.
Question 8: What are the minimal cognitive prerequisites
for the occurrence of a basic emotion?
The minimal cognitive prerequisite for eliciting a first-order
emotion is the perception of at least the contours of a bioevolutionarily prepared stimulus. An example is a 6- to 8-weekold infants smile on perceiving the contours of a human face
(Izard et al., 1995). Even young children suffering with anencephaly (and incapable of conceptual processes) smile at familiar
faces, suggesting that brainstem mechanisms can mediate the
smile response to a human face independent of neocortical structures (Merker, 2007).
In sum, first-order emotion response systems operate only
when the individual is confronted with an ecologically valid
stimulus (or its conditioned counterpart) in its natural context
(or a reasonable facsimile). After early development, a very
small proportion of negative-emotion experiences meet the
criteria for status as a first-order emotion. The frequency of
first-order negative emotion experiences in the everyday life of
normal people in a peaceful society, like the frequency of their
first-order positive emotions experiences, also varies as a
function of the genetically determined aspects of emotional or
temperamental disposition.

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