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Research on emotion flourishes in many disciplines and specialties, yet experts cannot agree on its definition. Theorists and researchers use the term emotion in ways that imply different processes and meanings. Debate continues about the nature of emotions, their functions, their relations to broad affective dimensions, the processes that activate them, and their role in our daily activities and pursuits. I will address these issues here, specifically in terms of basic emotions as natural kinds, the nature of emotion schemas, the development of emotion-cognition relations that lead to emotion schemas, and discrete emotions in relation to affective dimensions. Finally, I propose a new paradigm that assumes continual emotion as a factor in organizing consciousness and as an influence on mind and behavior. The evidence reviewed suggests that a theory that builds on concepts of both basic emotions and emotion schemas provides a viable research tool and is compatible with more holistic or dimensional approaches.

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Following leads from differential emotions theory and empirical research, we evaluated an index of emotion knowledge as a long-term predictor of positive and negative social behavior and academic competence in a sample of children from economically disadvantaged families (N = 72). The index of emotion knowledge represents the child's ability to recognize and label emotion expressions. We administered control and predictor measures when the children were 5 years old and obtained criterion data at age 9. After controlling for verbal ability and temperament, our index of emotion knowledge predicted aggregate indices of positive and negative social behavior and academic competence. Path analysis showed that emotion knowledge mediated the effect of verbal ability on academic competence. We argue that the ability to detect and label emotion cues facilitates positive social interactions and that a deficit in this ability contributes to behavioral and learning problems. Our findings have implications for primary prevention.

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.

The idea of innate and universal facial expressions that have links with human emotions was given the status of scientific hypothesis by Darwin (1872/1965). Substantial evidence, old and new, supports his hypothesis. Much of the evidence is independent of language, but Russell's (1994) criticisms of the hypothesis focus on language-dependent data. In this article, it is argued that Russell's critique was off target in that his arguments relate only to a hypothesis of the universality of semantic attributions and overstated in that he used questionable logic in designing studies to support his claims. It is also argued that Russell misinterpreted the relation between the universality hypothesis and differential emotions theory. Finally, new evidence is presented that supports the Darwinian hypothesis of the innateness and universality of the facial expressions of a limited set of emotions and the efficacy of the most commonly used method of testing it.

From the cognitive theory perspective that emotions are cognition dependent and contain cognitive components, Ortony and Turner (1990) questioned the validity of the concept of basic emotions. They argued that the so-called basic emotions were neither psychologically or biologically "primitive" nor "irreducible building blocks" for generating the "great variety of emotional experiences." In the biosocial theory tradition, researchers have identified multiple noncognitive activators of emotion and demonstrated the usefulness of defining the essential components of emotion as phenomena that do not require cognitive mediators or constituents. In this framework, emotions are seen as basic because their biological and social functions are essential in evolution and adaptation. Particular emotions are called basic because they are assumed to have innate neural substrates, innate and universal expressions, and unique feeling-motivational states. The great variety of emotional experiences is explained as a function of emotion-cognition interactions that result in affective-cognitive structures.

The significant role of emotions in evolution and adaptation suggests that there must be more than 1 mechanism for generating them. Nevertheless, much of current emotion theory focuses on cognitive processes (appraisal, attribution, and construal) as the sole, or primary, means of eliciting emotions. As an alternative to this position, the present model describes 4 types of emotion-activating systems, 3 of which involve noncognitive information processing. From an evolutionary-developmental perspective, the systems maybe viewed as a loosely organized hierarchical arrangement, with neural systems, the simplest and most rapid, at the base and cognitive systems, the most complex and versatile, at the top. The emotion-activating systems operate under a number of constraints, including genetically influenced individual differences. The hierarchical organization of the systems for generating emotions provides an adaptive advantage.