Basic Emotions or Ur-Emotions?

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2011 3: 406Emotion ReviewNico H. Frijda and W. Gerrod Parrott

Basic Emotions or Ur-Emotions?

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Emotion Review Vol. 3, No. 4 (October 2011) 406–415

© The Author(s) 2011 ISSN 1754-0739 DOI: 10.1177/1754073911410742er.sagepub.com

Basic Emotions or Ur-Emotions?

Nico H. FrijdaDepartment of Social and Behavioral Sciences, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands

W. Gerrod ParrottDepartment of Psychology, Georgetown University, USA

Abstract

This article sets out to replace the concept of basic emotions with the notion of “ur-emotions,” the functionally central underlying processes of action readiness, which are not emotions at all. We propose that what is basic and universal in emotions are not multicomponential syndromes, but states of action readiness, themselves variants of motive states to relate or not relate with the world and with oneself. Unlike emotions, ur-emotions can be held to be universal and biologically based.

Keywordsaction readiness, action tendencies, basic emotions, universal emotions

Emotion Universality

Like many people, we have the intuition that there is something universal about emotions. The easy recognizability and broad similarity of some emotional responses across cultures and even across species suggests that emotions have a universal basis. One way to explain this universality is to postulate dis-crete basic emotions, typically defined as prepackaged multi-componential response patterns or as subjective feelings. But the concept of basic emotions has fallen on hard times. Evidence for the occurrence of basic emotions is rather contro-versial (Barrett, 2006; Reisenzein, 2000). Cultural differences have been demonstrated to exist in the response patterns denoted by emotion names considered close translations. Emotional states labeled by particular emotion names are regu-larly but not invariably accompanied by particular facial expressions (Mesquita, 2003), and their duration does not match reported emotion duration (Frijda, 2007). Moreover, the construct of basic emotion has promoted undesirable conse-quences: a focus on a small subset of human emotions, and neglect of emotional variability (Solomon, 2004).

We propose that intuitions of universality can be accounted for without postulating basic emotion patterns. It is not multi-componential response patterns that are universal, we believe, but rather something more abstract. Describing the nature of that abstract something is the primary purpose of this article. We will argue that the feature that best captures intuitions of

universality of emotions is action readiness. Action readiness refers to the motive state that underlies feelings of emotional urge or action tendencies, the action tendencies themselves, increases and decreases in activation, overt emotional behavior including expressive behavior, emotional feelings, and other components of emotion. These motive states include loss or decay of motive state, as in despair, apathy, and states of help-lessness. States of action readiness form the “core” of emotions, because the functional significance of emotions is to initiate or modify tendencies to establish, disrupt, or maintain relationships with the environment or an object of thought (Frijda, 1986). But states of action readiness also reflect failures in accomplishing this functional significance.

We will refer to these motive states or states of action readiness as ur-emotions (Parrott, 2010). We will continue to refer to the multicomponential response patterns within which states of action readiness figure as emotions, for short, since emotions (for short) can be defined by the presence of some variant of motive state—some ur-emotion. Ur-emotions, we propose, reflect a limited number of modes of relating to other people, objects, or circumstances. The number of modes of relating is limited because the physical and social environ-ments only happen to allow that limited number, at a given level of abstraction. These various modes can each be recog-nized in the large variety of actions by means of which rela-tions between individuals and other individuals, objects, and events can be implemented.

Corresponding author: Nico H. Frijda, Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, University of Amsterdam, Seranggracht 1, 1019PM, The Netherlands. Email: [email protected]

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Frijda & Parrott Basic Emotions or Ur-Emotions? 407

Ur-emotions rarely occur by themselves. Usually, ur-emotions can only be recognized as the core element in multicomponen-tial response patterns, because motive states provide the impe-tus for also having the other components. Ur-emotions are thus abstract in the sense of being the skeleton that is given flesh in their instantiation in multicomponential emotional responses.

Ur-EmotionsThe choice of the term ur-emotion highlights the abstract nature of emotion universals. “Ur-” is a common German prefix that means “underlying,” “archetypal,” “original,” “preliminary,” or “primitive.” The term ur-emotion can therefore suggest both an underlying structure and an evolutionary, biologically based source. In either case there is no suggestion that two emotional response patterns representing the same ur-emotion cannot drastically differ in important ways (Parrott, 2010).

Several basic emotion theorists indeed appear to have shaped their definitions of basic emotion so as to suggest some-thing akin to the abstraction of ur-emotion. For example, Panksepp (1992, p. 559) distinguishes actual emotional response patterns from the “ancient neurosymbolic systems” from which they emerge. Ekman (1992, p. 192) at one point stipulates that a basic emotion is not a single emotional state but rather “a fam-ily of related states” (italics in the original). Johnson-Laird and Oatley (2000, p. 472) describe basic emotions in adult humans as being “inchoate” unless culture elaborates their content and expression. That “inchoate” might precisely apply to a response that only consists of the consciously felt mode of action readiness, perhaps together with autonomous excitement.

We focus on action readiness for three reasons. Action readiness supplies the functional basis of emotion. It can be inferred from the behavior of nonverbal infants and animals. And it can be conceived in abstract terms that apply across very different cultures, conditions, and species.

The American philosopher John Dewey (1895, p. 17) was perhaps the first to characterize emotions as involving “a readiness to act in certain ways.” In the same year, the French psychologist Ribot (1896) made acting central to an analysis of emotions:

It is the power to reach out and to desire, and as a consequence to feel pleasure and pain. Reaching out (tendance in French) has nothing mys-terious: it is a movement or a termination of movement in its state of birth. I use this word tendency as the synonym for needs, inclinations, instincts, desires. (Ribot, 1896, p. 2; present authors’ translation)

Similar views were developed by Wilhelm Wundt (1900), Karl Bühler (1934), Gustav Kafka (1950), and such ethologists as Adriaan Kortlandt (1955), Konrad Lorenz (1952), and Niko Tinbergen (1951). Kafka’s article is of particular interest because he, too, used the “ur-” prefix when he coined a name for the basic types of emotion. He called them Uraffekte, “ur-affects.”1 Kafka viewed ur-affects as action tendencies of the subject, aiming to establish or modify his or her relationship to some target object or person. Ur-affects include inclinations to move toward or away from an object, or to make the object

move toward or away from the subject. Kafka envisaged a simple 2 × 2 scheme consisting of four types of ur-affect: (a) moving a target object toward oneself, (b) moving a target object away from oneself, (c) moving oneself away from a tar-get object, and (d) moving oneself towards a target object. Kafka saw these four ur-affects as roughly corresponding to the emotions of desire, disgust, fear, and affiliation (or love). Each ur-affect, Kafka proposed, can be traced to adaptational provi-sions from very low levels of evolutionary succession, initially by way of morphological adaptations like shells, and reflexes like startle, freezing, and defensive stinging, as bees and some fishes do.

Kafka’s perspective provides a grounding for the intuition of universality in emotions. What may very well be universal are dispositions for various forms of action readiness. The ur-affects are very similar in intent to the notion of action tendency introduced by Arnold (1960), and expanded in the notion of action readiness proposed by Frijda (1986, 2007), a term that Kafka and Dewey also explicitly had used.

Ur-emotions are states of action readiness. They are motive states to identify actions that may promote the individual’s con-cerns by establishing or modifying the relationship between the subject and a concern-relevant target: some other person, some state of the world, the world as a whole, some source of infor-mation. They, in addition, impart execution of the action with a sense of urgency, precedence over other engagements, persist-ence in spite of obstacles and interruptions. They invest the prepared action with what has been called control precedence (Frijda, 2007). In this, states of action readiness are distinct, both behaviorally and in experience, from intentions that are not emotionally motivated.

Ur-emotions are intentional states, in the two senses which that term can have. They have bearing on some object (in the generic sense). And they in general have an aim, that is, a future state or the continuation of the present one. One desires an embrace, or one wants to cling to the embrace one is in.

They usually have a specific target, in a person or object or event, such as a loss or an achievement. But they do not always and necessarily have one. Ur-emotions may concern the world as a whole, or the space in which one moves as such. One may, among the states of action readiness, distinguish action tenden-cies that are directed towards or away from a specific target, from activation modes (Frijda, 2007), that for instance include increases or decreases in readiness to relate or interact as such, as in moods. But even when not involving the relationship with a particular target, ur-emotions are still Intentional states, with a capital I. In opening up for the beautiful morning one relates to that, and in greeting it still more explicitly so. A happy mood embraces the world, and a sad mood meets an empty one. Action readiness à vide is depicted in ballet dancing, when the dancer deals with gravity, the accessibility of space, and open-ness for or closure from stimulus intake and information. It is experienced when watching that ballet dancer in one’s empathic participation in her dancing (Frijda & Sundararajan, 2007). It occurs in wilfully adopting expressive behavior, even when unobtrusively elicited (Strack, Martin, & Stepper, 1988), and



408 Emotion Review Vol. 3 No. 4

the more so when performed “with conviction,” by adopting an engaged time course of activation and interpersonal movement path (Flach, 1928).

Action readiness without a target occurs in being or feeling “randy” without having anyone in mind. It occurs in neuro-pathologically caused urges towards anger and violence, as in what has been described as “catathymic crises” by Wertham (1978). And it occurs during epileptic auras, as illustrated and discussed by MacLean (1993, p. 79): there just is a sense of desiring or getting close to, of feeling and being dejected, of gratulence or exuberance.

There is one ur-emotion that cannot properly be said to be a mode of action readiness: helplessness. This is a state of unreadiness for action and for relating, an “inaction tendency” that may be categorized with the other ur-emotions by a process of opposition or negation. Helplessness arises under circum-stances that present a full reason for acting, but in which no action can be constructed or found, or no energy for acting remains. It may go so far as even to remain indifferent to a change in circumstance for the better. It occurs in those forms of anxiety in which threat has no content except for having no control over oneself and over whatever challenge the world may present (McReynolds, 1976). It may also accompany inter-nal misery that one carries around wherever one goes, and where there is no escaping from, as in severe physical pain without an analgesic, and after loss of a child (Wortman & Silver, 1989). In humans, the only action that remains is a pri-mary action: weeping. Tears are being interpreted as manifesta-tions of helplessness (Vingerhoets, 2011). When no tears are left, the feeling of pain implicitly carries the implication that it would be better to be without it.

Exhaustion provides another condition, and so does the despair in which everything one can think of has been tried. So are decay of motivation due to dopamine deficiency, as in Parkinson’s disease, and akinetic mutism (Damasio, 2000). These variants all formally fall under the heading of modes of action readiness. Decay and absence are among the modes of readiness, but in which neither action nor readiness are there.

Distinguishing Ur-EmotionsThe four ur-affects described by Kafka are too general, however. They blur major observable distinctions in types of interaction, and in aims to establish or modify some relationship. For instance, anger, or antagonistic action, is not necessarily a vari-ant of moving oneself away from the target object (as Kafka, 1950, p. 263, has it). Anger rather involves readiness for a move-ment of opposition or hurting or “going against” (Davitz, 1969), or of seeking to control someone else’s unwanted actions. Kafka’s scheme also does not distinguish modes of action readi-ness that inherently involve complementary interactions, such as affiliative relationships, and such prominent kinds of relation-ship as dominance and submission. And it does not include states of loss or absence of action readiness, as just mentioned.

Distinctions among modes of action readiness have been made on various grounds. One is the functional analysis of

expressive behavior. As Darwin (1872/1965) argued, expressive behavior originated as behavior that regulates subject–object relationships, such as attending, approaching, retreating from, domineering. It survived for that same reason, and not prima-rily because it served communication. Small wonder that ani-mals and humans can recognize when conspecifics look at them, make ready to approach them, keep aloof from them, threaten them (Fridlund, 1994).

Three further bases for distinguishing modes of action readiness may be described. One consists of the outcomes of the analysis of co-occurrence of social behaviors. Van Hooff’s (1972) analysis of chimpanzee social behavior, for instance, yielded clusters that resemble human emotion categories. Another basis has been cluster analysis of codified self-reports of emotion experiences (Davitz, 1969), which rather straight-forwardly yielded modes of action readiness such as action tendencies like “going against,” and activation modes like “hypoactivation” (Davitz, 1969). A final basis consists of factor analyses of correlations between the items of an extensive action readiness questionnaire. The questionnaire was checked for recalled instances of a number of emotions identified by name. Translations of the questionnaire were used with American, Dutch, French, Indonesian, and Japanese subjects (Frijda, Kuipers, & Terschure, 1989; Frijda, Markam, Sato, & Wiers, 1995; Roseman, Wiest, & Swartz, 1994; Tcherkassof, 1999). The factors represented different modes of action readi-ness yielding different factor scores for different emotions.

Some further validation of action readiness analysis has come from ratings of facial-expression photographs in terms of items of this action readiness questionnaire (Frijda & Tcherkassof, 1997; Tcherkassof, 1999; Tcherkassof & de Suremain, 2005). Interjudge agreement on the ratings in those studies was about as high as interjudge agreement in the assign-ment of emotion labels to those photographs, among French subjects as well as among subjects in Burkina Faso (Tcherkassof & de Suremain, 2005). The outcomes also provided support for the action readiness interpretation of facial expressions.

Figure 1 presents the ur-emotions distinguished so far, on the basis of the approaches just mentioned (Davitz, 1969; Frijda et al., 1989; Frijda et al., 1995; Roseman et al., 1994; Van Hooff, 1972).

Ur-emotions are best conceived as activated mental struc-tures (Jackendoff, 2007) that specify particular motivational, motor, and cognitive response processes. These activated struc-tures may just remain states of readiness, in the way that the neural representations of imagined or intended actions are (Jeannerod, 2001). They also may remain states of central preparation, such as attentional orientation. They may exist as felt inclinations or urges or, in the event, as states of nonactiva-tion: as felt listlessness or apathy. But at any moment they may, upon external stimuli or thoughts, activate the motivational, motor, and cognitive processes themselves. They then produce actions, attentional shifts, physiological reactions, and further thoughts. They also produce the mentioned dynamic action features that reflect the temporal changes in activation state that are so telling for the motivational nature of emotions.




The motor processes—the actions—may vary in extent or completeness. Urge to avoid, for instance, may become manifest in just a frown, or in hesitation of forward move-ment, or full-grown retreat or flight, or uttering words of fright, or “oh, no!”

The information contained in those mental structures func-tion as mental schemas or concepts. Input that matches part of the structure tends to access the remainder of the structure, just as this happens in accessing “mirror neuron activations” upon watching the movements of other individuals (Rizzolatti, Fogassi, & Gallese, 2000), and that may, on occasion, produce “resonance” in the observer (Jeannerod, 2001). Because higher nonhuman animals are presumed to be capable of forming states of action readiness and of recognizing the action readiness of other animals, the format of these structures must primarily be nonpropositional and nonlinguistic. The format presumably is modality specific, in the way perceptual symbol systems are supposed to be (Barsalou, 1999). They prominently contain action and motivational constituents. The aims are best rendered by image-like equivalents of exclamatory verbal injunctions such as “at it!”; “prevent it!”; “with it!”; “away with it!”; “away from it!”; “here, you!”—the sort of expressions by which Kafka characterized his ur-affects.

The mental structures of ur-emotions, as just said, can each be considered schemas in memory that contain a number of slots. The major slot is “aim,” the “determining tendency” of early action psychology (Ach, 1935). It is the major slot, because it defines each ur-emotion. Other slots are its target (if the mode of action readiness has one), the outcome that embod-ies its aim, and that recurs in the selected action’s efferent copy (von Holst & Mittelstaedt, 1950). Available instrumental actions that may fulfill the aim fill another slot again. Current strength parameters, projected time courses (such as rising to a peak in antagonistic actions), and currently active motor engagements form further ones. Theory about the structures has yet to be developed. A preliminary illustration is given for three action tendencies (Figure 2). When slots and entries are getting

specified in ongoing processing, the schema of action readiness turns into a state of action readiness, into a representation of action-in-progress with its time course, and into action with its time course itself.

As indicated above, modes of action readiness are inferred from the equifunctionality of relational behaviors. Many dif-ferent behaviors can share a given outcome, or appear to intend to do so, such as controlling someone else’s behavior, and thus alternate in a given kind of emotional encounter. Ur-emotions are manifest in that way. Dogs can implement antagonism by gnarling, showing teeth, taking aggressive pos-tures, and actual attack. These all are “primary actions” that belong to the species’ innately prepared action repertoire. Each hypothesized mode of action readiness can command at least one such species-specific and presumably innate primary action. Desire can command grasping, holding, approaching, ingesting. Affiliation can command physical proximity, acceptance of physical proximity, and smiling. Antagonism can command extending one’s nails, if one is a cat, or even a kitten a few days old (Leyhausen, 1979), extending one’s fin-gers with one’s nails if one is a young or drunken human, and general tenseness.

But each ur-emotion can access an infinite variety of acquired action schemas, and construct action variations on the spot, such as the escape movements made by a newly encaged animal, like Thorndike’s (1935) cats in his puzzle boxes. Inversely, an infinite number of actions can implement each aim. The actions may be geared to the specific circumstances, involve trial-and-error search for some action that happens to achieve the aim (as Thorndike’s cats finally did), involve the most diverse target objects, and manifest variations in intensity (Frijda, 2007). No emotional state, as defined by a label or ver-bal category, invariably elicits one or a few specific actions, as Barrett (2006) has repeatedly argued. But that is how it should be, given that emotions contain states of action readiness that take shape in actions in conjunction with the influence of event properties as appraised.

1. Acceptance Accepting presence or interaction 2. Nonacceptance Not accepting presence or interaction 3. Attending Acquiring information 4. Disinterest Not acquiring information 5. Affiliate Achieving or accepting close interpersonal interaction 6. Avoid Decreasing interaction 7. Reject Refusing interaction 8. Antagonism Modifying unwanted target action 9. Desire Achieving positive hedonic outcome10. Caring for Improving target’s well-being11. Exuberance Promoting gratuitous interactions12. Domination Controlling others’ actions13. Submission Following someone else’s wishes14. Helplessness Desiring to act but not knowing how15. Hyperactivation Increase of relational activity16. Hypoactivation Decrease of relational activity17. Tenseness Simultaneous opposing action tendencies18. Inhibition Inhibition of activated action readiness

Figure 1. Ur-emotions: modes of action readiness.




Ur-Emotions and AppraisalUr-emotions are elicited by events as appraised. Different ur-emotions are elicited by events appraised in different ways. The structure of each ur-emotion thus includes a sensitivity for an appraisal pattern that in some way matches the aims of its action readiness. Antagonism, for example, is triggered by being subject to unwanted target actions, or expecting to be their target, and submission is triggered by an apparently power-ful or capable person (see Figure 2). We, the authors, still face the task of establishing a listing, for all ur-emotions, of the sensitivities that differentiate their elicitation. A construal of the target is intrinsic to the action readiness, whether that construal resulted from appraisal or from the nature of one’s movement and orientation toward a stimulus—it is a representation of the aims that the ur-emotion seeks to achieve. Without sensitivity to these action-relevant properties, action readiness cannot be modulated in a functional manner (Parrott & Schulkin, 1993).

However, not all ur-emotions are triggered by events and their appraisal. Sometimes, a change in action readiness can be instigated directly by stimuli or directly by self-produced movements. Examples include some of the emotions evoked by hearing music (Scherer & Zentner, 2001), and by viewing as

well as performing dancing (Flach, 1928). They are instances of what action theory calls processes of resonance: the activation of the neural representation of action by viewing and executing action (Jeannerod, 2001). Other examples are the changes in affective experience by adopting facial or other expressions “with conviction” (e.g., Flach, 1928; Niedenthal, 2007; Strack et al., 1988), of which the mechanisms are still to be explored. Their examples may all involve some process of “complex completion”: perceived music and making movements may activate the mental structures of action readiness with them.

Emergence of action readiness can also result from imagi-nation. One can imagine performing massive destruction, even without imagining a target object, feeling the urge and power of the image and, perhaps, even producing a few mus-cle twists. Such virtual action readiness might be what allows images in poetry to obtain emotional content. It might form the substance of what have been termed “refined emotions” (Frijda & Sundararajan, 2007).

FeelingsWe have described ur-emotions in terms of action readiness, and by implication by reference to the actions, which readiness

AFFILIATION Aim: Achieving or maintaining physical or mental proximity or positive

interaction with target.Target: Trusted environment or person.Action schema: Some action that produces or maintains interaction with target. Action outcome: Stable state of being in proximity of and interaction with target;

sense of familiarity, trust, belongingness.Primary actions: Proximity seeking, touching, communicating, emulating,

sharing feelings and actions.Time course: Smooth, tender.Appraisal sensitivity: Any person appraised as attractive trusted, or liked.Imperative: Be with!

ANTAGONISMAim: Controlling unwanted action by target. Target: Any object or event appraised as interfering with one’s

concern satisfactions.Action schema: Any action that blocks target progress, removes target from

interaction space, or hurts target.Action outcome: Target discouraged from self-directed actions, or prevented

from undertaking such actions.Primary actions: Attacking, intimidating, hurting, biting, scratching, reactance.Time course: Forceful, rising to a peak.Appraisal sensitivity: Event containing or announcing unwanted effect or action.Imperative: Stop it!

SUBMISSIONAim: Following someone else’s, or an authority’s, wishes.Target: Other person appraised as admirable or as hostile or powerful.Action schemas: Obeying; following target commands and initiatives; refraining from

target-directed power or hostility displays.Action outcomes: Target hostility diversion, sharing in target’s power and other profits. Primary actions: Submission displays, suppression of actions possibly displeasing

the target; gaze aversion; hiding from view Any.Time course:Appraisal sensitivity: Perceived power of target.Imperative: I obey! I conform! I follow!

Figure 2. Mental structures of some modes of action readiness.




may give rise to. But they can, point for point, also be described by describing feelings. The point of departure of our analysis is that just as actions stem from subpersonal neural activations, and perceptions from sensory-input-based neural patterns, so too are feelings the outcomes from recurrent neural processing of the neural processes representing the psychological, information-processing processes involved (Lamme, 2006). The content and quality of feelings as reported reflect the processes that func-tional analysis infers to explain behavior and behavior- antecedent relationships that, for a large part, also can occur nonconsciously. These conscious outcomes, in turn, may affect behavior, such as indulging in love play.

Emotional feelings can reflect all components that are part of multicomponential emotional responses (Frijda, 2005, 2007; Parrott, 2007). They include bodily awareness like autonomic responses and the feedback from actions and interactions. They often contain awareness of the eliciting event as appraised. But they can also only consist of mere urges, to affiliate and be close, to forcefully go against, or of being empty, listless, devoid of impetus, being no more than a shell, as this may occur in some states of depression. It is our conviction that “feelings of anger,” “feelings of love,” “feelings of joy” are not unanalyz-able qualia, but mainly the products of states of action readiness—experiences that melded the underlying informa-tion, in the way that the color impression orange melded the processes for yellow and red, according to the mysterious laws of consciousness constitution.

Ur-Emotions and “Emotions”Ur-emotions form the source, and thus the most fundamental component, of multicomponential emotion responses. They result from processes of appraisal, that interpret the eliciting and developing situation in the light of one’s concerns and prior appraisals that have constituted “sentiments”: affective attitudes towards objects or events (Frijda, 2007; Shand, 1920). The out-comes of all this may become conscious, and guide action preparation, planning and progress, including adjustment to that progress. They, the states of action readiness, may be influenced by the verbal coding of one’s response and the knowledge surrounding those codes.

Ur-emotions are elicited by appraisals that vary along a number of dimensions (Ellsworth & Scherer, 2003), due to event relevance to different concerns and in different situations. Ur-emotions thus are part of multicomponential emotion responses, and figure among those other components. A given ur-emotion thus can occur in many different multicomponential emotion responses.

For instance, the ur-emotion of submission can be part of an emotion of shame (witness the frequent posture with bent head during shame), of amae (abandoning to the tender care of a partner; Niiya, Ellsworth, & Yamagiuchi, 2006), of awe, of admiration, humility, and respect. In each of these various mul-ticomponential emotional responses, the ur-emotion of submis-sion differs in the appraisal of the event that induced it and that cocolored the concomitant awareness of the event as appraised.

In each, the submission served a different concern or set of concerns. Appraisal, we think, consists of expectations of the impact that can be expected from the eliciting event, either in what it may offer or what it may do to the subject (Frijda, 2007)—the expected benefit or harm. Shame is due to some committed transgression, expected rejection by others or expul-sion from the group, and harm to self-esteem. Submission serves to deflect that rejection by decreasing a gap in apparent norm adherence, and by ingratiation. Amae involves the oppor-tunity to trustfully abandon to someone else’s cares, in a passive position. One has to let go of one’s pride. One gladly submits to the tenderness. Awe recognizes the power and quality of some-one, some object, or some performance. One willingly and openly recognizes the target’s superiority, refrains from compet-ing, and from challenging the target’s power. Admiration again shows recognition of the target’s quality, and is happy to mod-estly go into its vicinity. Humility again avoids competing, and may relish the protection by the target’s power and prestige, and admission in the target’s neighborhood. Respect manifests that one knows one’s place in the order of things.

Emotions characterized by antagonism can likewise impor-tantly differ, by different specifications of some of the slots in the mental structure of antagonistic ur-emotion itself, and by the simultaneous activity of other ur-emotions (see Frijda, in press; Mesquita & Frijda, in press). The English anger prominently suggests the action schemas involving violence, and hurting the target. The Indonesian word Marah readily carries the implica-tion of blushing (Frijda et al., 1995), perhaps because of the simultaneous call to go against a polite interaction, and to reject the target. The Japanese word Ikari, although translated into English as anger, includes inclinations to approach, and to shut off access of information that might be appraised as indicating blameworthiness of the target. Song, on the island of Ifaluk, translated as “justified anger,” carries the implication of the target’s being appraised as having offended moral concerns (Lutz, 1988). It thereby modulates the actions elicited by antagonistic readiness (unpublished data, underlying the data reported in Frijda et al., 1995; and descriptive information from Lutz, 1988). Among the Utku studied by Briggs (1970), vio-lence and insults were absent, but terminating the interaction, and avoiding contact, occurred. This notably is so too among Japanese subjects, and much less frequently so among the Dutch and English ones (Frijda et al., 1995).

A final example of an ur-emotion occurring in many differ-ent multicomponential emotion responses is helplessness. It is best characterized as a mere motivation to accept change with-out the slightest idea about a means to achieve it: states of great misery or pain. Panic and existential anxiety form examples. They often have no object, which may well be a source of the state being felt as panic. It is not unlikely that any object the panic does have, like catastrophically appraised body sensa-tions (Clark, 1986), is focused on in the vain hope to find a possible action, as proposed by Barendregt and Frijda (1982). Other emotional states in which helplessness figures are called burnout, when the state is due to prolonged taxing duties. It also characterized the medieval emotion of acedia, “the noonday




demon,” that afflicted monks who had lost all enthusiasm for performing their spiritual exercises (Harré & Finlay-Jones, 1986). It also is central in what has been called the “musulman syndrome” among the prisoners in concentration camps, who gave up hope, hunched against a tree or wall, did not move, and died within a few days (see the description and the term in Levi, 1988). Burnout, acedia, and musulman syndrome differ in their antecedents, circumstances, appraisals of the responsi-bility of others and oneself. But the motive state, in fact the frustrated motivation, marks it as an instance of the ur-emotion of helplessness occurring within a multicomponential response context.

Universality of Ur-EmotionsOur present proposal thus is: there exist universal ur-emotions. They indeed have something “basic” about them. They form the core of multidimensional emotion responses. They do so by calling in additional response components—perceptual scan-ning to check on appraisal, awareness of appraisal outcomes, autonomic patterns to fit energy requirements—to serve the aims of the ur-emotions in selecting actions, under the action requirements and opportunities of the given situation and the currently relevant concern.

Arousal of a particular ur-emotion does not imply arousal of a particular multicomponential emotion, as labeled in the lan-guage at hand. To repeat: most of the components in such emo-tions entertain no fixed relationships to the ur-emotion involved. They reflect the effort anticipated in the actual or prepared action, the animate or inanimate nature of the target, and the concern underlying the emotional nature of the eliciting event.

Good claims can be made for the universality of the ur-emotions. The claims are based on the universal occurrence of most facial expressions (and probably postures) in all popula-tions examined, and the far above chance assignments of emo-tion labels to most stereotyped instances of them (Elfenbein & Ambady, 2002). The claims are further supported by the indica-tions of consonance of action readiness dimensions in the ratings of recalled emotion instances in widely different languages, mentioned before (Frijda et al., 1995). That support is strengthened by the evidence that what facial expressions appear to signal are modes of action readiness rather than emo-tions as labeled in the language (Frijda & Tcherkassof, 1997; Tcherkassof & de Suremain, 2005). One may expect that research on naturally occurring expressive behaviors will show larger consistency in action readiness assignments than in emo-tion label assignments, since naturally occurring facial expres-sions tend to be of moderate intensity, and moderately intense expressions tend to yield wider variation in label assignments than do selected and stereotyped ones (Frijda, 1953; Manstead & Tetlock, 1989; Russell, 1991).

At a somewhat higher level of analysis, it is to be expected that in all human sociocultural groups, individuals can be found who show actions that implement relational motives, of the kinds and at the types of occasion proposed in the current per-spectives. In all human societies one will find, we predict, individuals who, on occasion, are inclined to offer resistance

when threatened by harm, curtailed in their freedom of action, or offended in their cultural norms. In all cultural groups there will be individuals who extend care to other individuals in their groups who need care or protection. Every cultural group will sport members who seek to affiliate with other individuals, notably if these are members of the same group. Our expecta-tion of such universals does not preclude the existence or importance of cultural differences in the frequency of such reactions. On the contrary, our perspective claims universality at the level of ur-emotions, not of the given multicomponential syndromes of which they may be part.

If indeed a given set of modes of action readiness is universal, they are likely to be innate, at some level. One thing clearly is innate: each animal species has at its disposal some innate pri-mary actions that implement the functions we have assigned to the ur-emotions. Each animal species has some provision to decrease interaction with natural harm or harm by rivals, com-petitors, and predators, of which startle and flight are major examples, and seeking shelter another. In each vertebrate spe-cies (and perhaps also in many invertebrate ones) the males manifest desire—that is, seeking behavior—in response to the smell or sight of a female in her fertile period, and in each spe-cies, females tend to manifest reciprocal receptive readiness upon male approach. Older psychology classed all those “reflexes” under the heading of “instincts” (e.g., McDougall, 1923). Many nonvertebrates have some physical provisions with similar functions, such as decreasing interactions by a shell or spines, or the size increase of a blowfish that likewise appears to discourage predators. Kafka (1950), from his back-ground as the editor of an early Handbook of Comparative Psychology (Kafka, 1922), explicitly made the connection between ur-emotions and those physical provisions.

Evolution of Action ReadinessIn the earliest times of life, animals promoted or protected the functions that keep their species alive, and to a large extent themselves as individuals, by means of reflexes. Wasps put out their stings when approached closely (we suppose), ticks let themselves drop when a warm object passes under the branch they are sitting on, mussels close their shells when the shell is tapped, mammals duck and freeze upon an unexpected loud noise of light flash (Landis & Hunt, 1939), and so on.

But from early on, animals also possessed the potential for action readiness: the potential for modifying their relationship with objects or with the environment as a whole. That potential is given by the basic innate provisions for action: for locomo-tion, for adjusting sensory organs like antennae and eyes that move, for extending limbs, pricking up ears, drawing in and grasping by hands, for sniffing with noses and tasting with tongues. Action readinesses, to repeat, are motive states to modify subject–object relationships in particular fashions, and that in turn may implement their aims by a variety of overt actions, and thus by flexible actions or sequences of actions.

As stated before, these states of action readiness possess con-trol precedence. They sport a measure of spontaneity, in that they may emerge from internal deficits or from other internal signals




such as discomfort and discrepancies between current states and internal standards that have been denoted by the term “concerns.” They show a measure of persistence for as long as these signals continue and processing resources like dopamine suffice (Berridge, 2007). We may see this action readiness in its most elementary form in the efforts made by a just-born foal that within 10 minutes seeks to stand up, or a chicken seeking to get out of its eggshell. We see it in a silverfish that starts running when the floor trembles. We see it in a just-caged turtle when fished out of the pond, and which may keep you awake the whole night by its nails scratching the aquarium. The examples illustrate the ur-emotion of desire in its “urest” or purest or most target-free form: as mere wanting, in the way Berridge (1999) shaped that notion.

And then, in evolution, came “cognitive” development: anticipation of elements in the environment, and of outcomes of actions to interact with that environment. The information processing that we call “cognition” soon became of an amazing complexity, witness the computations involved in the actions of insects in, for instance, dead-reckoning in homing (Gallistel & Gibbon, 2000). Later there came major growth in anticipation of action outcomes, both factually and hedonically (Dickinson & Balleine, 2002, 2010), which allows inverse engineering, the derivation of what actions to undertake by knowledge of what they will have to achieve.

This latter addition, too, seems to have begun fairly early in animal evolution. Famous is the observation by Tinbergen (1951) of a digger wasp which several times started anew with her egg-laying ritual and the necessary killing of a caterpillar, after Tinbergen had taken away the pebble with which the wasp had closed the hole with caterpillar and eggs, until she got enough of it and just looked for a new pebble.

All this is behavioral evidence for provisions for action readi-ness in general, and for the innate bases for particular ur-emotions. In addition, there is neural and neurohumoral evidence for them. Panksepp (1998) discussed a range of motivational neural systems: the seeking system, energy resource regulation system, rage and fear and anxiety system, love and lust system, a social bond system, a panic system, concerned with responding to the disruption of social bonds, and a play or joy system. They do not truly match with the multicomponential emotion catego-ries of everyday language. Their functioning is more abstract, as the ur-emotions are. A further pointer to the innate, biological nature of motivational systems at the level of abstractness of ur-emotions is the differential involvement of neurotransmitters such as midbrain dopamine, oxytocin, vasopressin, and serotonin. These neurotransmitters all exert widespread effects over the brain, notably supported by rapid volume transmission by way of the cerebrospinal fluid (Veening & Barendregt, 2010). For instance, intraventricular injections of oxytocin have been shown to positively affect affiliative behaviors, parental behavior, social and sociosexual behavior, anxiety reduction, and pain reduction, as well as sensitivity to olfactory cues that is vital to recognizing mates and offspring (Veening, de Jong, & Barendregt, 2010). Similarly, there are indications that vasopressin subserves a “power dominance drive motivation” that may be linked to the ur-emotion of antagonism (Sewards & Sewards, 2003).

In summary, the evidence for innate facial expressions, motivations, action repertoires, neural circuitry, and neurotrans-mitters is consistent with ur-emotions, rather than with multicomponential basic-emotion syndromes.

Final RemarksWe may conclude that there exist basic and universal disposi-tions underlying emotions: ur-emotions, which are a specifia-ble set of states of action readiness. States of action readiness do not stand in one-to-one relationships with emotions as dis-tinguished in emotion taxonomies, because those taxonomies derive from multicomponential response patterns, as well as from distinctions between emotion antecedents, and perti-nence to social values. Taxonomic distinctions do not derive primarily from biological dispositions, nor do they do it from the overall functional significance of multicomponential response patterns.

These conclusions follow suggestive indications for univer-sality in the domain of emotions. We conclude that there exists a probably universal aspect of emotions: a motivational compo-nent, which manifests a limited variety of mental structures.

This existence of a universal set of action tendencies does not preclude the existence of additional universal aspects of emotions. There most probably exists a limited set of universal human emotional sensitivities. One may call them “core emo-tional sensitivities.” Such a notion is akin to Lazarus’ (1991) notion of core relational themes. It corresponds to sensitivity for events implying increase and decrease of satisfaction of univer-sal concerns. These include the basic biological and social ones. It is likely that all human social groups are familiar with such sensitivities, even if not every individual will be. No group, we expect, will be surprised by the appearance of emotional response to presence and loss of particular other individuals. In no group will there be surprise upon observing emotional response to potential targets of sexual interest, even if in some groups they will be considered sins or offending the rules set by divinity. In no group will there be amazement upon witnessing response to hostile behaviors by others. And so on. The basic fabric of emotionality, we suggest, is universal.

Yet this fabric is stitched differently in different cultures. Any action tendency can be expressed in a variety of ways, or not at all. Any core emotional sensitivity may be interpreted in a variety of social roles, contexts, and evaluations. These variations preclude the existence of universal multicomponent response syndromes. The most plausible candidates for universals are more abstract ur-emotions, such as the general forms of action readiness.

Note1 We are grateful to Rainer Reisenzein for bringing Kafka’s article to our

attention.

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Basic Emotions or Ur-Emotions?