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• How to Write a Thesis Statement | 4 Steps & Examples

How to Write a Thesis Statement | 4 Steps & Examples

Published on January 11, 2019 by Shona McCombes . Revised on August 15, 2023 by Eoghan Ryan.

A thesis statement is a sentence that sums up the central point of your paper or essay . It usually comes near the end of your introduction .

Your thesis will look a bit different depending on the type of essay you’re writing. But the thesis statement should always clearly state the main idea you want to get across. Everything else in your essay should relate back to this idea.

You can write your thesis statement by following four simple steps:

• Start with a question
• Write your initial answer
• Develop your answer
• Refine your thesis statement

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Table of contents

What is a thesis statement, placement of the thesis statement, step 1: start with a question, step 2: write your initial answer, step 3: develop your answer, step 4: refine your thesis statement, types of thesis statements, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about thesis statements.

A thesis statement summarizes the central points of your essay. It is a signpost telling the reader what the essay will argue and why.

The best thesis statements are:

• Concise: A good thesis statement is short and sweet—don’t use more words than necessary. State your point clearly and directly in one or two sentences.
• Contentious: Your thesis shouldn’t be a simple statement of fact that everyone already knows. A good thesis statement is a claim that requires further evidence or analysis to back it up.
• Coherent: Everything mentioned in your thesis statement must be supported and explained in the rest of your paper.

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The thesis statement generally appears at the end of your essay introduction or research paper introduction .

The spread of the internet has had a world-changing effect, not least on the world of education. The use of the internet in academic contexts and among young people more generally is hotly debated. For many who did not grow up with this technology, its effects seem alarming and potentially harmful. This concern, while understandable, is misguided. The negatives of internet use are outweighed by its many benefits for education: the internet facilitates easier access to information, exposure to different perspectives, and a flexible learning environment for both students and teachers.

You should come up with an initial thesis, sometimes called a working thesis , early in the writing process . As soon as you’ve decided on your essay topic , you need to work out what you want to say about it—a clear thesis will give your essay direction and structure.

You might already have a question in your assignment, but if not, try to come up with your own. What would you like to find out or decide about your topic?

For example, you might ask:

After some initial research, you can formulate a tentative answer to this question. At this stage it can be simple, and it should guide the research process and writing process .

Now you need to consider why this is your answer and how you will convince your reader to agree with you. As you read more about your topic and begin writing, your answer should get more detailed.

In your essay about the internet and education, the thesis states your position and sketches out the key arguments you’ll use to support it.

The negatives of internet use are outweighed by its many benefits for education because it facilitates easier access to information.

In your essay about braille, the thesis statement summarizes the key historical development that you’ll explain.

The invention of braille in the 19th century transformed the lives of blind people, allowing them to participate more actively in public life.

A strong thesis statement should tell the reader:

• Why you hold this position
• What they’ll learn from your essay
• The key points of your argument or narrative

The final thesis statement doesn’t just state your position, but summarizes your overall argument or the entire topic you’re going to explain. To strengthen a weak thesis statement, it can help to consider the broader context of your topic.

These examples are more specific and show that you’ll explore your topic in depth.

Your thesis statement should match the goals of your essay, which vary depending on the type of essay you’re writing:

• In an argumentative essay , your thesis statement should take a strong position. Your aim in the essay is to convince your reader of this thesis based on evidence and logical reasoning.
• In an expository essay , you’ll aim to explain the facts of a topic or process. Your thesis statement doesn’t have to include a strong opinion in this case, but it should clearly state the central point you want to make, and mention the key elements you’ll explain.

If you want to know more about AI tools , college essays , or fallacies make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

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A thesis statement is a sentence that sums up the central point of your paper or essay . Everything else you write should relate to this key idea.

The thesis statement is essential in any academic essay or research paper for two main reasons:

• It gives your writing direction and focus.
• It gives the reader a concise summary of your main point.

Without a clear thesis statement, an essay can end up rambling and unfocused, leaving your reader unsure of exactly what you want to say.

Follow these four steps to come up with a thesis statement :

• Ask a question about your topic .
• Write your initial answer.
• Develop your answer by including reasons.
• Refine your answer, adding more detail and nuance.

The thesis statement should be placed at the end of your essay introduction .

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Thesis Statements

What this handout is about.

This handout describes what a thesis statement is, how thesis statements work in your writing, and how you can craft or refine one for your draft.

Introduction

Writing in college often takes the form of persuasion—convincing others that you have an interesting, logical point of view on the subject you are studying. Persuasion is a skill you practice regularly in your daily life. You persuade your roommate to clean up, your parents to let you borrow the car, your friend to vote for your favorite candidate or policy. In college, course assignments often ask you to make a persuasive case in writing. You are asked to convince your reader of your point of view. This form of persuasion, often called academic argument, follows a predictable pattern in writing. After a brief introduction of your topic, you state your point of view on the topic directly and often in one sentence. This sentence is the thesis statement, and it serves as a summary of the argument you’ll make in the rest of your paper.

What is a thesis statement?

A thesis statement:

• tells the reader how you will interpret the significance of the subject matter under discussion.
• is a road map for the paper; in other words, it tells the reader what to expect from the rest of the paper.
• directly answers the question asked of you. A thesis is an interpretation of a question or subject, not the subject itself. The subject, or topic, of an essay might be World War II or Moby Dick; a thesis must then offer a way to understand the war or the novel.
• makes a claim that others might dispute.
• is usually a single sentence near the beginning of your paper (most often, at the end of the first paragraph) that presents your argument to the reader. The rest of the paper, the body of the essay, gathers and organizes evidence that will persuade the reader of the logic of your interpretation.

If your assignment asks you to take a position or develop a claim about a subject, you may need to convey that position or claim in a thesis statement near the beginning of your draft. The assignment may not explicitly state that you need a thesis statement because your instructor may assume you will include one. When in doubt, ask your instructor if the assignment requires a thesis statement. When an assignment asks you to analyze, to interpret, to compare and contrast, to demonstrate cause and effect, or to take a stand on an issue, it is likely that you are being asked to develop a thesis and to support it persuasively. (Check out our handout on understanding assignments for more information.)

How do I create a thesis?

A thesis is the result of a lengthy thinking process. Formulating a thesis is not the first thing you do after reading an essay assignment. Before you develop an argument on any topic, you have to collect and organize evidence, look for possible relationships between known facts (such as surprising contrasts or similarities), and think about the significance of these relationships. Once you do this thinking, you will probably have a “working thesis” that presents a basic or main idea and an argument that you think you can support with evidence. Both the argument and your thesis are likely to need adjustment along the way.

Writers use all kinds of techniques to stimulate their thinking and to help them clarify relationships or comprehend the broader significance of a topic and arrive at a thesis statement. For more ideas on how to get started, see our handout on brainstorming .

How do I know if my thesis is strong?

If there’s time, run it by your instructor or make an appointment at the Writing Center to get some feedback. Even if you do not have time to get advice elsewhere, you can do some thesis evaluation of your own. When reviewing your first draft and its working thesis, ask yourself the following :

• Do I answer the question? Re-reading the question prompt after constructing a working thesis can help you fix an argument that misses the focus of the question. If the prompt isn’t phrased as a question, try to rephrase it. For example, “Discuss the effect of X on Y” can be rephrased as “What is the effect of X on Y?”
• Have I taken a position that others might challenge or oppose? If your thesis simply states facts that no one would, or even could, disagree with, it’s possible that you are simply providing a summary, rather than making an argument.
• Is my thesis statement specific enough? Thesis statements that are too vague often do not have a strong argument. If your thesis contains words like “good” or “successful,” see if you could be more specific: why is something “good”; what specifically makes something “successful”?
• Does my thesis pass the “So what?” test? If a reader’s first response is likely to  be “So what?” then you need to clarify, to forge a relationship, or to connect to a larger issue.
• Does my essay support my thesis specifically and without wandering? If your thesis and the body of your essay do not seem to go together, one of them has to change. It’s okay to change your working thesis to reflect things you have figured out in the course of writing your paper. Remember, always reassess and revise your writing as necessary.
• Does my thesis pass the “how and why?” test? If a reader’s first response is “how?” or “why?” your thesis may be too open-ended and lack guidance for the reader. See what you can add to give the reader a better take on your position right from the beginning.

Suppose you are taking a course on contemporary communication, and the instructor hands out the following essay assignment: “Discuss the impact of social media on public awareness.” Looking back at your notes, you might start with this working thesis:

Social media impacts public awareness in both positive and negative ways.

You can use the questions above to help you revise this general statement into a stronger thesis.

• Do I answer the question? You can analyze this if you rephrase “discuss the impact” as “what is the impact?” This way, you can see that you’ve answered the question only very generally with the vague “positive and negative ways.”
• Have I taken a position that others might challenge or oppose? Not likely. Only people who maintain that social media has a solely positive or solely negative impact could disagree.
• Is my thesis statement specific enough? No. What are the positive effects? What are the negative effects?
• Does my thesis pass the “how and why?” test? No. Why are they positive? How are they positive? What are their causes? Why are they negative? How are they negative? What are their causes?
• Does my thesis pass the “So what?” test? No. Why should anyone care about the positive and/or negative impact of social media?

After thinking about your answers to these questions, you decide to focus on the one impact you feel strongly about and have strong evidence for:

Because not every voice on social media is reliable, people have become much more critical consumers of information, and thus, more informed voters.

This version is a much stronger thesis! It answers the question, takes a specific position that others can challenge, and it gives a sense of why it matters.

Let’s try another. Suppose your literature professor hands out the following assignment in a class on the American novel: Write an analysis of some aspect of Mark Twain’s novel Huckleberry Finn. “This will be easy,” you think. “I loved Huckleberry Finn!” You grab a pad of paper and write:

Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn is a great American novel.

You begin to analyze your thesis:

• Do I answer the question? No. The prompt asks you to analyze some aspect of the novel. Your working thesis is a statement of general appreciation for the entire novel.

Think about aspects of the novel that are important to its structure or meaning—for example, the role of storytelling, the contrasting scenes between the shore and the river, or the relationships between adults and children. Now you write:

In Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain develops a contrast between life on the river and life on the shore.

• Do I answer the question? Yes!
• Have I taken a position that others might challenge or oppose? Not really. This contrast is well-known and accepted.
• Is my thesis statement specific enough? It’s getting there–you have highlighted an important aspect of the novel for investigation. However, it’s still not clear what your analysis will reveal.
• Does my thesis pass the “how and why?” test? Not yet. Compare scenes from the book and see what you discover. Free write, make lists, jot down Huck’s actions and reactions and anything else that seems interesting.
• Does my thesis pass the “So what?” test? What’s the point of this contrast? What does it signify?”

After examining the evidence and considering your own insights, you write:

Through its contrasting river and shore scenes, Twain’s Huckleberry Finn suggests that to find the true expression of American democratic ideals, one must leave “civilized” society and go back to nature.

This final thesis statement presents an interpretation of a literary work based on an analysis of its content. Of course, for the essay itself to be successful, you must now present evidence from the novel that will convince the reader of your interpretation.

Works consulted

We consulted these works while writing this handout. This is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout’s topic, and we encourage you to do your own research to find additional publications. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial . We revise these tips periodically and welcome feedback.

Anson, Chris M., and Robert A. Schwegler. 2010. The Longman Handbook for Writers and Readers , 6th ed. New York: Longman.

Lunsford, Andrea A. 2015. The St. Martin’s Handbook , 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St Martin’s.

Ramage, John D., John C. Bean, and June Johnson. 2018. The Allyn & Bacon Guide to Writing , 8th ed. New York: Pearson.

Ruszkiewicz, John J., Christy Friend, Daniel Seward, and Maxine Hairston. 2010. The Scott, Foresman Handbook for Writers , 9th ed. Boston: Pearson Education.

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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How to write a thesis statement + examples

What is a thesis statement?

Is a thesis statement a question, how do you write a good thesis statement, how do i know if my thesis statement is good, examples of thesis statements, helpful resources on how to write a thesis statement, frequently asked questions about writing a thesis statement, related articles.

A thesis statement is the main argument of your paper or thesis.

The thesis statement is one of the most important elements of any piece of academic writing . It is a brief statement of your paper’s main argument. Essentially, you are stating what you will be writing about.

You can see your thesis statement as an answer to a question. While it also contains the question, it should really give an answer to the question with new information and not just restate or reiterate it.

Your thesis statement is part of your introduction. Learn more about how to write a good thesis introduction in our introduction guide .

A thesis statement is not a question. A statement must be arguable and provable through evidence and analysis. While your thesis might stem from a research question, it should be in the form of a statement.

Tip: A thesis statement is typically 1-2 sentences. For a longer project like a thesis, the statement may be several sentences or a paragraph.

A good thesis statement needs to do the following:

• Condense the main idea of your thesis into one or two sentences.
• Answer your project’s main research question.
• Clearly state your position in relation to the topic .
• Make an argument that requires support or evidence.

Once you have written down a thesis statement, check if it fulfills the following criteria:

• Your statement needs to be provable by evidence. As an argument, a thesis statement needs to be debatable.
• Your statement needs to be precise. Do not give away too much information in the thesis statement and do not load it with unnecessary information.
• Your statement cannot say that one solution is simply right or simply wrong as a matter of fact. You should draw upon verified facts to persuade the reader of your solution, but you cannot just declare something as right or wrong.

As previously mentioned, your thesis statement should answer a question.

If the question is:

What do you think the City of New York should do to reduce traffic congestion?

A good thesis statement restates the question and answers it:

In this paper, I will argue that the City of New York should focus on providing exclusive lanes for public transport and adaptive traffic signals to reduce traffic congestion by the year 2035.

Here is another example. If the question is:

How can we end poverty?

A good thesis statement should give more than one solution to the problem in question:

In this paper, I will argue that introducing universal basic income can help reduce poverty and positively impact the way we work.

• The Writing Center of the University of North Carolina has a list of questions to ask to see if your thesis is strong .

A thesis statement is part of the introduction of your paper. It is usually found in the first or second paragraph to let the reader know your research purpose from the beginning.

In general, a thesis statement should have one or two sentences. But the length really depends on the overall length of your project. Take a look at our guide about the length of thesis statements for more insight on this topic.

Here is a list of Thesis Statement Examples that will help you understand better how to write them.

Every good essay should include a thesis statement as part of its introduction, no matter the academic level. Of course, if you are a high school student you are not expected to have the same type of thesis as a PhD student.

Here is a great YouTube tutorial showing How To Write An Essay: Thesis Statements .

OASIS: Writing Center

Writing a paper: thesis statements, basics of thesis statements.

The thesis statement is the brief articulation of your paper's central argument and purpose. You might hear it referred to as simply a "thesis." Every scholarly paper should have a thesis statement, and strong thesis statements are concise, specific, and arguable. Concise means the thesis is short: perhaps one or two sentences for a shorter paper. Specific means the thesis deals with a narrow and focused topic, appropriate to the paper's length. Arguable means that a scholar in your field could disagree (or perhaps already has!).

Strong thesis statements address specific intellectual questions, have clear positions, and use a structure that reflects the overall structure of the paper. Read on to learn more about constructing a strong thesis statement.

Being Specific

This thesis statement has no specific argument:

Needs Improvement: In this essay, I will examine two scholarly articles to find similarities and differences.

This statement is concise, but it is neither specific nor arguable—a reader might wonder, "Which scholarly articles? What is the topic of this paper? What field is the author writing in?" Additionally, the purpose of the paper—to "examine…to find similarities and differences" is not of a scholarly level. Identifying similarities and differences is a good first step, but strong academic argument goes further, analyzing what those similarities and differences might mean or imply.

Better: In this essay, I will argue that Bowler's (2003) autocratic management style, when coupled with Smith's (2007) theory of social cognition, can reduce the expenses associated with employee turnover.

The new revision here is still concise, as well as specific and arguable.  We can see that it is specific because the writer is mentioning (a) concrete ideas and (b) exact authors.  We can also gather the field (business) and the topic (management and employee turnover). The statement is arguable because the student goes beyond merely comparing; he or she draws conclusions from that comparison ("can reduce the expenses associated with employee turnover").

Making a Unique Argument

This thesis draft repeats the language of the writing prompt without making a unique argument:

Needs Improvement: The purpose of this essay is to monitor, assess, and evaluate an educational program for its strengths and weaknesses. Then, I will provide suggestions for improvement.

You can see here that the student has simply stated the paper's assignment, without articulating specifically how he or she will address it. The student can correct this error simply by phrasing the thesis statement as a specific answer to the assignment prompt.

Better: Through a series of student interviews, I found that Kennedy High School's antibullying program was ineffective. In order to address issues of conflict between students, I argue that Kennedy High School should embrace policies outlined by the California Department of Education (2010).

Words like "ineffective" and "argue" show here that the student has clearly thought through the assignment and analyzed the material; he or she is putting forth a specific and debatable position. The concrete information ("student interviews," "antibullying") further prepares the reader for the body of the paper and demonstrates how the student has addressed the assignment prompt without just restating that language.

Creating a Debate

This thesis statement includes only obvious fact or plot summary instead of argument:

Needs Improvement: Leadership is an important quality in nurse educators.

A good strategy to determine if your thesis statement is too broad (and therefore, not arguable) is to ask yourself, "Would a scholar in my field disagree with this point?" Here, we can see easily that no scholar is likely to argue that leadership is an unimportant quality in nurse educators.  The student needs to come up with a more arguable claim, and probably a narrower one; remember that a short paper needs a more focused topic than a dissertation.

Better: Roderick's (2009) theory of participatory leadership  is particularly appropriate to nurse educators working within the emergency medicine field, where students benefit most from collegial and kinesthetic learning.

Here, the student has identified a particular type of leadership ("participatory leadership"), narrowing the topic, and has made an arguable claim (this type of leadership is "appropriate" to a specific type of nurse educator). Conceivably, a scholar in the nursing field might disagree with this approach. The student's paper can now proceed, providing specific pieces of evidence to support the arguable central claim.

Choosing the Right Words

This thesis statement uses large or scholarly-sounding words that have no real substance:

Needs Improvement: Scholars should work to seize metacognitive outcomes by harnessing discipline-based networks to empower collaborative infrastructures.

There are many words in this sentence that may be buzzwords in the student's field or key terms taken from other texts, but together they do not communicate a clear, specific meaning. Sometimes students think scholarly writing means constructing complex sentences using special language, but actually it's usually a stronger choice to write clear, simple sentences. When in doubt, remember that your ideas should be complex, not your sentence structure.

Better: Ecologists should work to educate the U.S. public on conservation methods by making use of local and national green organizations to create a widespread communication plan.

Notice in the revision that the field is now clear (ecology), and the language has been made much more field-specific ("conservation methods," "green organizations"), so the reader is able to see concretely the ideas the student is communicating.

Leaving Room for Discussion

This thesis statement is not capable of development or advancement in the paper:

Needs Improvement: There are always alternatives to illegal drug use.

This sample thesis statement makes a claim, but it is not a claim that will sustain extended discussion. This claim is the type of claim that might be appropriate for the conclusion of a paper, but in the beginning of the paper, the student is left with nowhere to go. What further points can be made? If there are "always alternatives" to the problem the student is identifying, then why bother developing a paper around that claim? Ideally, a thesis statement should be complex enough to explore over the length of the entire paper.

Better: The most effective treatment plan for methamphetamine addiction may be a combination of pharmacological and cognitive therapy, as argued by Baker (2008), Smith (2009), and Xavier (2011).

In the revised thesis, you can see the student make a specific, debatable claim that has the potential to generate several pages' worth of discussion. When drafting a thesis statement, think about the questions your thesis statement will generate: What follow-up inquiries might a reader have? In the first example, there are almost no additional questions implied, but the revised example allows for a good deal more exploration.

Thesis Mad Libs

If you are having trouble getting started, try using the models below to generate a rough model of a thesis statement! These models are intended for drafting purposes only and should not appear in your final work.

• In this essay, I argue ____, using ______ to assert _____.
• While scholars have often argued ______, I argue______, because_______.
• Through an analysis of ______, I argue ______, which is important because_______.

Words to Avoid and to Embrace

When drafting your thesis statement, avoid words like explore, investigate, learn, compile, summarize , and explain to describe the main purpose of your paper. These words imply a paper that summarizes or "reports," rather than synthesizing and analyzing.

Instead of the terms above, try words like argue, critique, question , and interrogate . These more analytical words may help you begin strongly, by articulating a specific, critical, scholarly position.

Read Kayla's blog post for tips on taking a stand in a well-crafted thesis statement.

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How to Write a Strong Thesis Statement: 4 Steps + Examples

What’s Covered:

What is the purpose of a thesis statement, writing a good thesis statement: 4 steps, common pitfalls to avoid, where to get your essay edited for free.

When you set out to write an essay, there has to be some kind of point to it, right? Otherwise, your essay would just be a big jumble of word salad that makes absolutely no sense. An essay needs a central point that ties into everything else. That main point is called a thesis statement, and it’s the core of any essay or research paper.

You may hear about Master degree candidates writing a thesis, and that is an entire paper–not to be confused with the thesis statement, which is typically one sentence that contains your paper’s focus. 

Read on to learn more about thesis statements and how to write them. We’ve also included some solid examples for you to reference.

Typically the last sentence of your introductory paragraph, the thesis statement serves as the roadmap for your essay. When your reader gets to the thesis statement, they should have a clear outline of your main point, as well as the information you’ll be presenting in order to either prove or support your point. 

The thesis statement should not be confused for a topic sentence , which is the first sentence of every paragraph in your essay. If you need help writing topic sentences, numerous resources are available. Topic sentences should go along with your thesis statement, though.

Since the thesis statement is the most important sentence of your entire essay or paper, it’s imperative that you get this part right. Otherwise, your paper will not have a good flow and will seem disjointed. That’s why it’s vital not to rush through developing one. It’s a methodical process with steps that you need to follow in order to create the best thesis statement possible.

Step 1: Decide what kind of paper you’re writing

When you’re assigned an essay, there are several different types you may get. Argumentative essays are designed to get the reader to agree with you on a topic. Informative or expository essays present information to the reader. Analytical essays offer up a point and then expand on it by analyzing relevant information. Thesis statements can look and sound different based on the type of paper you’re writing. For example:

• Argumentative: The United States needs a viable third political party to decrease bipartisanship, increase options, and help reduce corruption in government.
• Informative: The Libertarian party has thrown off elections before by gaining enough support in states to get on the ballot and by taking away crucial votes from candidates.
• Analytical: An analysis of past presidential elections shows that while third party votes may have been the minority, they did affect the outcome of the elections in 2020, 2016, and beyond.

Step 2: Figure out what point you want to make

Once you know what type of paper you’re writing, you then need to figure out the point you want to make with your thesis statement, and subsequently, your paper. In other words, you need to decide to answer a question about something, such as:

• What impact did reality TV have on American society?
• How has the musical Hamilton affected perception of American history?
• Why do I want to major in [chosen major here]?

If you have an argumentative essay, then you will be writing about an opinion. To make it easier, you may want to choose an opinion that you feel passionate about so that you’re writing about something that interests you. For example, if you have an interest in preserving the environment, you may want to choose a topic that relates to that. 

If you’re writing your college essay and they ask why you want to attend that school, you may want to have a main point and back it up with information, something along the lines of:

“Attending Harvard University would benefit me both academically and professionally, as it would give me a strong knowledge base upon which to build my career, develop my network, and hopefully give me an advantage in my chosen field.”

Step 3: Determine what information you’ll use to back up your point

Once you have the point you want to make, you need to figure out how you plan to back it up throughout the rest of your essay. Without this information, it will be hard to either prove or argue the main point of your thesis statement. If you decide to write about the Hamilton example, you may decide to address any falsehoods that the writer put into the musical, such as:

“The musical Hamilton, while accurate in many ways, leaves out key parts of American history, presents a nationalist view of founding fathers, and downplays the racism of the times.”

Once you’ve written your initial working thesis statement, you’ll then need to get information to back that up. For example, the musical completely leaves out Benjamin Franklin, portrays the founding fathers in a nationalist way that is too complimentary, and shows Hamilton as a staunch abolitionist despite the fact that his family likely did own slaves. 

Step 4: Revise and refine your thesis statement before you start writing

Read through your thesis statement several times before you begin to compose your full essay. You need to make sure the statement is ironclad, since it is the foundation of the entire paper. Edit it or have a peer review it for you to make sure everything makes sense and that you feel like you can truly write a paper on the topic. Once you’ve done that, you can then begin writing your paper.

When writing a thesis statement, there are some common pitfalls you should avoid so that your paper can be as solid as possible. Make sure you always edit the thesis statement before you do anything else. You also want to ensure that the thesis statement is clear and concise. Don’t make your reader hunt for your point. Finally, put your thesis statement at the end of the first paragraph and have your introduction flow toward that statement. Your reader will expect to find your statement in its traditional spot.

If you’re having trouble getting started, or need some guidance on your essay, there are tools available that can help you. CollegeVine offers a free peer essay review tool where one of your peers can read through your essay and provide you with valuable feedback. Getting essay feedback from a peer can help you wow your instructor or college admissions officer with an impactful essay that effectively illustrates your point.

Related CollegeVine Blog Posts

Writing a Thesis Statement — Definition, Types, and Examples

What is a thesis statement?

A thesis statement is a single sentence that identifies the topic and purpose of a scholarly research paper or academic writing. A thesis statement directly or indirectly presents the main points of the paper. Information presented in the essay should tie directly back to the thesis.

Overall, a good thesis statement accomplishes the following:

Identifies the purpose of the essay

Expresses the writer's position/opinion

Lists the main supports (optional)

Briefly summarizes the writer's conclusion(s)

Establish if the essay is explanatory, argumentative, or analytical

People often confuse thesis statements with topic sentences , which start each body paragraph. Typically, the thesis statement is the final sentence in the introductory paragraph and acts as a “road map” for the rest of the paper.

Types of thesis statements

The three main types of thesis statements are explanatory, argumentative, and analytical.

Explanatory thesis statements are used in expository essays that focus solely on informing the reader. Papers with this type of thesis do not contain the writer's opinion, nor do they try to persuade the reader.

The three main branches of science taught in public schools include biology, chemistry, and physics.

Argumentative thesis statements identify the writer's position or point of view on a given topic. Argumentative essays persuade the reader to agree with the writer's stance. If the reader cannot agree or disagree with the claim in the thesis, then it is not argumentative.

Public schools should place more emphasis on the arts because they encourage creativity, help improve academic development, and provide a beneficial emotional outlet.

Analytical thesis statements are used in papers that analyze how or why something does what it does. These thesis statements identify what the writer is analyzing, the parts of the analysis, and the order of those parts.

An analysis of course requirements in public schools suggests access to more electives can increase graduation rates.

How to write a thesis statement

When writing a thesis, the following guidelines apply:

Step 1: Determine the type of paper (explanatory, argumentative, or analytical).

Step 2: Identify the topic, position/claim, and supports of the essay.

Step 3: Determine if the supports should be included within the thesis. Although they are considered optional, they might be required depending on the audience and purpose of the essay.

Step 4: Compose a sentence that includes the topic, position, and supports (optional). While a thesis statement can be more than one sentence, it should not exceed two.

Step 5: Place the thesis statement at the end of the introductory paragraph(s). Placing it at the end of the introduction and before the supports allows the reader to focus on the paper’s main purpose.

Thesis statement examples

The following examples highlight each type of thesis statement.

Topic: Alternative Energy Sources

Explanatory Thesis: Alternative energy sources that can supplement the use of fossil fuels include solar, wind, and geothermal.

Argumentative Thesis: To combat reliance on foreign sources of fossil fuels, the United States would benefit from focusing on alternative energy options.

Analytical Thesis: Analysis suggests that replacing fossil fuels with alternative energy sources could negatively impact the economy.

Topic: Social Media

Explanatory Thesis: Three of the first platforms that influenced the world of social media include Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Argumentative Thesis: Social media negatively influences society as it increases opportunities for cyberbullying, limits face-to-face interactions, and creates unrealistic expectations.

Analytical Thesis: An analysis of the use of social media suggests itis irrevocably harming the development of teenagers.

Topic: Standardized Testing

Explanatory Thesis: Standardized tests such as the ACT and SAT play a limited role in influencing college acceptance.

Argumentative Thesis: Standardized testing should not be required because it increases anxiety, does not measure progress, and cannot predict future success.

Analytical Thesis: Analysis suggests that standardized testing in elementary and high school negatively impacts students' academic success.

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9.1 Developing a Strong, Clear Thesis Statement

Learning objectives.

• Develop a strong, clear thesis statement with the proper elements.
• Revise your thesis statement.

Have you ever known a person who was not very good at telling stories? You probably had trouble following his train of thought as he jumped around from point to point, either being too brief in places that needed further explanation or providing too many details on a meaningless element. Maybe he told the end of the story first, then moved to the beginning and later added details to the middle. His ideas were probably scattered, and the story did not flow very well. When the story was over, you probably had many questions.

Just as a personal anecdote can be a disorganized mess, an essay can fall into the same trap of being out of order and confusing. That is why writers need a thesis statement to provide a specific focus for their essay and to organize what they are about to discuss in the body.

Just like a topic sentence summarizes a single paragraph, the thesis statement summarizes an entire essay. It tells the reader the point you want to make in your essay, while the essay itself supports that point. It is like a signpost that signals the essay’s destination. You should form your thesis before you begin to organize an essay, but you may find that it needs revision as the essay develops.

Elements of a Thesis Statement

For every essay you write, you must focus on a central idea. This idea stems from a topic you have chosen or been assigned or from a question your teacher has asked. It is not enough merely to discuss a general topic or simply answer a question with a yes or no. You have to form a specific opinion, and then articulate that into a controlling idea —the main idea upon which you build your thesis.

Remember that a thesis is not the topic itself, but rather your interpretation of the question or subject. For whatever topic your professor gives you, you must ask yourself, “What do I want to say about it?” Asking and then answering this question is vital to forming a thesis that is precise, forceful and confident.

A thesis is one sentence long and appears toward the end of your introduction. It is specific and focuses on one to three points of a single idea—points that are able to be demonstrated in the body. It forecasts the content of the essay and suggests how you will organize your information. Remember that a thesis statement does not summarize an issue but rather dissects it.

A Strong Thesis Statement

A strong thesis statement contains the following qualities.

Specificity. A thesis statement must concentrate on a specific area of a general topic. As you may recall, the creation of a thesis statement begins when you choose a broad subject and then narrow down its parts until you pinpoint a specific aspect of that topic. For example, health care is a broad topic, but a proper thesis statement would focus on a specific area of that topic, such as options for individuals without health care coverage.

Precision. A strong thesis statement must be precise enough to allow for a coherent argument and to remain focused on the topic. If the specific topic is options for individuals without health care coverage, then your precise thesis statement must make an exact claim about it, such as that limited options exist for those who are uninsured by their employers. You must further pinpoint what you are going to discuss regarding these limited effects, such as whom they affect and what the cause is.

Ability to be argued. A thesis statement must present a relevant and specific argument. A factual statement often is not considered arguable. Be sure your thesis statement contains a point of view that can be supported with evidence.

Ability to be demonstrated. For any claim you make in your thesis, you must be able to provide reasons and examples for your opinion. You can rely on personal observations in order to do this, or you can consult outside sources to demonstrate that what you assert is valid. A worthy argument is backed by examples and details.

Forcefulness. A thesis statement that is forceful shows readers that you are, in fact, making an argument. The tone is assertive and takes a stance that others might oppose.

Confidence. In addition to using force in your thesis statement, you must also use confidence in your claim. Phrases such as I feel or I believe actually weaken the readers’ sense of your confidence because these phrases imply that you are the only person who feels the way you do. In other words, your stance has insufficient backing. Taking an authoritative stance on the matter persuades your readers to have faith in your argument and open their minds to what you have to say.

Even in a personal essay that allows the use of first person, your thesis should not contain phrases such as in my opinion or I believe . These statements reduce your credibility and weaken your argument. Your opinion is more convincing when you use a firm attitude.

On a separate sheet of paper, write a thesis statement for each of the following topics. Remember to make each statement specific, precise, demonstrable, forceful and confident.

• Texting while driving
• The legal drinking age in the United States
• Steroid use among professional athletes

Examples of Appropriate Thesis Statements

Each of the following thesis statements meets several of the following requirements:

• Specificity
• Ability to be argued
• Ability to be demonstrated
• Forcefulness
• The societal and personal struggles of Troy Maxon in the play Fences symbolize the challenge of black males who lived through segregation and integration in the United States.
• Closing all American borders for a period of five years is one solution that will tackle illegal immigration.
• Shakespeare’s use of dramatic irony in Romeo and Juliet spoils the outcome for the audience and weakens the plot.
• J. D. Salinger’s character in Catcher in the Rye , Holden Caulfield, is a confused rebel who voices his disgust with phonies, yet in an effort to protect himself, he acts like a phony on many occasions.
• Compared to an absolute divorce, no-fault divorce is less expensive, promotes fairer settlements, and reflects a more realistic view of the causes for marital breakdown.
• Exposing children from an early age to the dangers of drug abuse is a sure method of preventing future drug addicts.
• In today’s crumbling job market, a high school diploma is not significant enough education to land a stable, lucrative job.

You can find thesis statements in many places, such as in the news; in the opinions of friends, coworkers or teachers; and even in songs you hear on the radio. Become aware of thesis statements in everyday life by paying attention to people’s opinions and their reasons for those opinions. Pay attention to your own everyday thesis statements as well, as these can become material for future essays.

Now that you have read about the contents of a good thesis statement and have seen examples, take a look at the pitfalls to avoid when composing your own thesis:

A thesis is weak when it is simply a declaration of your subject or a description of what you will discuss in your essay.

Weak thesis statement: My paper will explain why imagination is more important than knowledge.

A thesis is weak when it makes an unreasonable or outrageous claim or insults the opposing side.

Weak thesis statement: Religious radicals across America are trying to legislate their Puritanical beliefs by banning required high school books.

A thesis is weak when it contains an obvious fact or something that no one can disagree with or provides a dead end.

Weak thesis statement: Advertising companies use sex to sell their products.

A thesis is weak when the statement is too broad.

Weak thesis statement: The life of Abraham Lincoln was long and challenging.

Read the following thesis statements. On a separate piece of paper, identify each as weak or strong. For those that are weak, list the reasons why. Then revise the weak statements so that they conform to the requirements of a strong thesis.

• The subject of this paper is my experience with ferrets as pets.
• The government must expand its funding for research on renewable energy resources in order to prepare for the impending end of oil.
• Edgar Allan Poe was a poet who lived in Baltimore during the nineteenth century.
• In this essay, I will give you lots of reasons why slot machines should not be legalized in Baltimore.
• Despite his promises during his campaign, President Kennedy took few executive measures to support civil rights legislation.
• Because many children’s toys have potential safety hazards that could lead to injury, it is clear that not all children’s toys are safe.
• My experience with young children has taught me that I want to be a disciplinary parent because I believe that a child without discipline can be a parent’s worst nightmare.

Writing at Work

Often in your career, you will need to ask your boss for something through an e-mail. Just as a thesis statement organizes an essay, it can also organize your e-mail request. While your e-mail will be shorter than an essay, using a thesis statement in your first paragraph quickly lets your boss know what you are asking for, why it is necessary, and what the benefits are. In short body paragraphs, you can provide the essential information needed to expand upon your request.

Thesis Statement Revision

Your thesis will probably change as you write, so you will need to modify it to reflect exactly what you have discussed in your essay. Remember from Chapter 8 “The Writing Process: How Do I Begin?” that your thesis statement begins as a working thesis statement , an indefinite statement that you make about your topic early in the writing process for the purpose of planning and guiding your writing.

Working thesis statements often become stronger as you gather information and form new opinions and reasons for those opinions. Revision helps you strengthen your thesis so that it matches what you have expressed in the body of the paper.

The best way to revise your thesis statement is to ask questions about it and then examine the answers to those questions. By challenging your own ideas and forming definite reasons for those ideas, you grow closer to a more precise point of view, which you can then incorporate into your thesis statement.

Ways to Revise Your Thesis

You can cut down on irrelevant aspects and revise your thesis by taking the following steps:

1. Pinpoint and replace all nonspecific words, such as people , everything , society , or life , with more precise words in order to reduce any vagueness.

Working thesis: Young people have to work hard to succeed in life.

Revised thesis: Recent college graduates must have discipline and persistence in order to find and maintain a stable job in which they can use and be appreciated for their talents.

The revised thesis makes a more specific statement about success and what it means to work hard. The original includes too broad a range of people and does not define exactly what success entails. By replacing those general words like people and work hard , the writer can better focus his or her research and gain more direction in his or her writing.

2. Clarify ideas that need explanation by asking yourself questions that narrow your thesis.

Working thesis: The welfare system is a joke.

Revised thesis: The welfare system keeps a socioeconomic class from gaining employment by alluring members of that class with unearned income, instead of programs to improve their education and skill sets.

A joke means many things to many people. Readers bring all sorts of backgrounds and perspectives to the reading process and would need clarification for a word so vague. This expression may also be too informal for the selected audience. By asking questions, the writer can devise a more precise and appropriate explanation for joke . The writer should ask himself or herself questions similar to the 5WH questions. (See Chapter 8 “The Writing Process: How Do I Begin?” for more information on the 5WH questions.) By incorporating the answers to these questions into a thesis statement, the writer more accurately defines his or her stance, which will better guide the writing of the essay.

3. Replace any linking verbs with action verbs. Linking verbs are forms of the verb to be , a verb that simply states that a situation exists.

Working thesis: Kansas City schoolteachers are not paid enough.

Revised thesis: The Kansas City legislature cannot afford to pay its educators, resulting in job cuts and resignations in a district that sorely needs highly qualified and dedicated teachers.

The linking verb in this working thesis statement is the word are . Linking verbs often make thesis statements weak because they do not express action. Rather, they connect words and phrases to the second half of the sentence. Readers might wonder, “Why are they not paid enough?” But this statement does not compel them to ask many more questions. The writer should ask himself or herself questions in order to replace the linking verb with an action verb, thus forming a stronger thesis statement, one that takes a more definitive stance on the issue:

• Who is not paying the teachers enough?
• What is considered “enough”?
• What is the problem?
• What are the results

4. Omit any general claims that are hard to support.

Working thesis: Today’s teenage girls are too sexualized.

Revised thesis: Teenage girls who are captivated by the sexual images on MTV are conditioned to believe that a woman’s worth depends on her sensuality, a feeling that harms their self-esteem and behavior.

It is true that some young women in today’s society are more sexualized than in the past, but that is not true for all girls. Many girls have strict parents, dress appropriately, and do not engage in sexual activity while in middle school and high school. The writer of this thesis should ask the following questions:

• Which teenage girls?
• What constitutes “too” sexualized?
• Why are they behaving that way?
• Where does this behavior show up?
• What are the repercussions?

In the first section of Chapter 8 “The Writing Process: How Do I Begin?” , you determined your purpose for writing and your audience. You then completed a freewriting exercise about an event you recently experienced and chose a general topic to write about. Using that general topic, you then narrowed it down by answering the 5WH questions. After you answered these questions, you chose one of the three methods of prewriting and gathered possible supporting points for your working thesis statement.

Now, on a separate sheet of paper, write down your working thesis statement. Identify any weaknesses in this sentence and revise the statement to reflect the elements of a strong thesis statement. Make sure it is specific, precise, arguable, demonstrable, forceful, and confident.

Collaboration

Please share with a classmate and compare your answers.

In your career you may have to write a project proposal that focuses on a particular problem in your company, such as reinforcing the tardiness policy. The proposal would aim to fix the problem; using a thesis statement would clearly state the boundaries of the problem and tell the goals of the project. After writing the proposal, you may find that the thesis needs revision to reflect exactly what is expressed in the body. Using the techniques from this chapter would apply to revising that thesis.

Key Takeaways

• Proper essays require a thesis statement to provide a specific focus and suggest how the essay will be organized.
• A thesis statement is your interpretation of the subject, not the topic itself.
• A strong thesis is specific, precise, forceful, confident, and is able to be demonstrated.
• A strong thesis challenges readers with a point of view that can be debated and can be supported with evidence.
• A weak thesis is simply a declaration of your topic or contains an obvious fact that cannot be argued.
• Depending on your topic, it may or may not be appropriate to use first person point of view.
• Revise your thesis by ensuring all words are specific, all ideas are exact, and all verbs express action.

Writing for Success Copyright © 2015 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Chapter 5: Thesis Statements, Introductions, and Conclusions

Effective thesis statements, an effective thesis statement:.

• identifies—or PREVIEWS —for what you plan to argue or inform, and it “telegraphs” how you plan to do so; that is, it communicates what particular support for your claim or idea is going where in your essay
• the subject, or topic, of an essay might be World War II or Moby Dick; a thesis must then offer a way to understand the war or the novel
• not only grabs the interest of your reader, who now wants to see you support your unique interpretation, but also provides a focus for your argument or idea, one to which every part of your paper refers in the development of your position
• keeps the writer centered on the matter at hand and reduces the risk of intellectual wandering
• is a complete statement

A simple equation for what a thesis might look like this:

What you plan to discuss/argue + How you plan to discuss/argue it = Thesis + Preview

Steps To Write Effective Thesis Statement

• Choose a prompt or, if appropriate, select a topic: television violence and children
• What are the effects of television violence on children?
• Violence on television increases aggressive behavior in children.
• Avoid general phrasing and/or sweeping words such as “all” or “none” or “every”.
• Lead the reader toward the topic sentences (the subtopics needed to prove the thesis).
• While poor parenting and easy access to weapons may act as contributory factors, in fact when children are exposed to television violence they become less sensitive to the pain and suffering of others, are more fearful of the world around them, and are more likely to behave in aggressive or harmful ways toward others.

The Components of an Effective Thesis Statement

• You can’t just pluck a thesis out of thin air. Even if you have a terrific insight concerning a topic, it won’t be worth much unless you can logically and persuasively support it in the body of your essay. A thesis is the evolutionary result of a thinking process, not a miraculous creation. Formulating a thesis is not the first thing you do after reading an essay assignment .
• Substantial – Your thesis should be a claim  or idea for which it is easy to answer every reader’s question: “So what?”
• Supportable – A thesis must be a claim that you can prove with the evidence at hand (e.g., evidence from your texts or from your research). Your claim should not be outlandish, nor should it be mere personal opinion or preference (e.g., “Frederick Douglass is my favorite historical figure.”) It tackles a subject that could be adequately covered in the format of the project assigned.
• Precise – It is focused and specific. A strong thesis proves a point without discussing everything. It clearly asserts your own conclusion based on evidence. Note: Be flexible. It is perfectly okay to change your thesis!
• Arguable  – It should be contestable for persuasive essays, proposing an arguable point with which people could reasonably disagree.
• Relevant – If you are responding to an assignment, the thesis should answer the question your teacher has posed. In order to stay focused, pay attention to the task words in the assignment: summarize, argue, compare/contrast, etc.
• Aware of Counters or Confusions – It anticipates and refutes the counter-arguments or possible ambiguities..

The best thesis statement is a balance of specific details and concise language. Your goal is to articulate an argument in detail without burdening the reader with too much information.

How do I know if my thesis is strong?

If there’s time, run it by your instructor or make an appointment at the Writing Center to get some feedback. Even if you do not have time to get advice elsewhere, you can do some thesis evaluation of your own. When reviewing your first draft and its working thesis, ask yourself the following:

• Do I answer a question ? This might seem obvious, but it’s worth asking. No matter how intriguing or dazzling, a thesis that doesn’t answer a question is not a good thesis! Re-reading the question prompt after constructing a working thesis can help you fix an argument that misses the focus of the question.
• If your thesis contains vague words like “good” or “successful,” see if you could be more specific: why is something “good”; what makes something “successful”?
• If your thesis simply states facts that no one would, or even could, disagree with, it’s possible that you are simply providing a summary, rather than making an argument.
• Is there a clear preview of main points to develop/argue the thesis ? You want the preview to indicate the organization of the essay (be it informative, argumentative, analytical, or a combination of these tacts) to provide a roadmap for the reader and a plan for you are accountable. This is as important as the thesis statement itself!
• Can my essay support my thesis specifically and without wandering ? If your thesis and the body of your essay do not seem to go together, one of them has to change. It’s o.k. to change your working thesis to reflect things you have figured out in the course of writing your paper. Remember, always reassess and revise your writing as necessary.
• Does my thesis statement adequately address the direction words of the prompt: summarize, argue, compare/contrast, analyze, discuss, etc. ?

Suppose you are taking a course on 19th-century America, and the instructor hands out the following essay assignment: Compare and contrast the reasons why the North and South fought the Civil War. You turn on the computer and type out the following:

The North and South fought the Civil War for many reasons, some of which were the same and some different.

This weak thesis restates the question without providing any additional information. You will expand on this new information in the body of the essay, but it is important that the reader know where you are heading. A reader of this weak thesis might think, “What reasons? How are they the same? How are they different?” Ask yourself these same questions and begin to compare Northern and Southern attitudes (perhaps you first think, “The South believed slavery was right, and the North thought slavery was wrong”). Now, push your comparison toward an interpretation—why did one side think slavery was right and the other side think it was wrong? You look again at the evidence, and you decide that you are going to argue that the North believed slavery was immoral while the South believed it upheld the Southern way of life. You write:

While both sides fought the Civil War over the issue of slavery, the North fought for moral reasons while the South fought to preserve its own institutions.

Now you have a working thesis! Included in this working thesis is a reason for the war and some idea of how the two sides disagreed over this reason. As you write the essay, you will probably begin to characterize these differences more precisely, and your working thesis may start to seem too vague. Maybe you decide that both sides fought for moral reasons, and that they just focused on different moral issues. You end up revising the working thesis into a final thesis that really captures the argument in your paper:

While both Northerners and Southerners believed they fought against tyranny and oppression, Northerners focused on the oppression of slaves while Southerners defended their own right to self-government.

Compare this to the original weak thesis. This final thesis presents a way of interpreting evidence that illuminates the significance of the question. Keep in mind that this is one of many possible interpretations of the Civil War—it is not the one and only right answer to the question . There isn’t one right answer; there are only strong and weak thesis statements and strong and weak uses of evidence.

Let’s look at another example. Suppose your literature professor hands out the following  assignment in a class on the American novel: Write an analysis of some aspect of Mark Twain’s novel Huckleberry Finn. “This will be easy,” you think. “I loved Huckleberry Finn!” You grab a pad of paper and write:

Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn is a great American novel.

Why is this thesis weak? Think about what the reader would expect from the essay that follows: you will most likely provide a general, appreciative summary of Twain’s novel. The question did not ask you to summarize; it asked you to analyze. Your professor is probably not interested in your opinion of the novel; instead, she wants you to think about why it’s such a great novel— what do Huck’s adventures tell us about life, about America, about coming of age, about race relations, etc.? First, the question asks you to pick an aspect of the novel that you think is important to its structure or meaning—for example, the role of storytelling, the contrasting scenes between the shore and the river, or the relationships between adults and children. Now you write:

In Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain develops a contrast between life on the river and life on the shore.

Here’s a working thesis with potential: you have highlighted an important aspect of the novel for investigation; however, it’s still not clear what your analysis will reveal. Your reader is intrigued, but is still thinking, “So what? What’s the point of this contrast? What does it signify?” Perhaps you are not sure yet, either. That’s fine—begin to work on comparing scenes from the book and see what you discover. Free write, make lists, jot down Huck’s actions and reactions. Eventually you will be able to clarify for yourself, and then for the reader, why this contrast matters. After examining the evidence and considering your own insights, you write:

Through its contrasting river and shore scenes, Twain’s Huckleberry Finn suggests that to find the true expression of American democratic ideals, one must leave “civilized” society and go back to nature.

This final thesis statement presents an interpretation of a literary work based on an analysis of its content. Of course, for the essay itself to be successful, you must now present evidence from the novel that will convince the reader of your interpretation.

Myths about Thesis Statements

• Every paper requires one . Assignments that ask you to write personal responses or to explore a subject don’t want you to seem to pre-judge the issues. Essays of literary interpretation often want you to be aware of many effects rather than seeming to box yourself into one view of the text.
• A thesis statement must come at the end of the first paragraph . This is a natural position for a statement of focus, but it’s not the only one. Some theses can be stated in the opening sentences of an essay; others need a paragraph or two of introduction; others can’t be fully formulated until the end.
• A thesis statement must be one sentence in length , no matter how many clauses it contains. Clear writing is more important than rules like these. Use two or three sentences if you need them. A complex argument may require a whole tightly-knit paragraph to make its initial statement of position.
• You can’t start writing an essay until you have a perfect thesis statement . It may be advisable to draft a hypothesis or tentative thesis statement near the start of a big project, but changing and refining a thesis is a main task of thinking your way through your ideas as you write a paper. And some essay projects need to explore the question in depth without being locked in before they can provide even a tentative answer.
• A thesis statement must give three points of support . It should indicate that the essay will explain and give evidence for its assertion, but points don’t need to come in any specific number.

Progressively Complex Thesis Statements

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Everything You Need to Know About Thesis Statement

Table of Contents

Persuasion is a skill that every human leverages to achieve their goals. For example, you persuade your friends to join you on some trip, your parents to purchase you an automobile, and your committee or audience to provide you approval for your research proposal.

Likewise, every scholarly task is aimed to persuade your readers or audience for certain goals. And the end goal is to incline the readers towards your perspective (facts and evidence-based). So, the act of convincing readers of your viewpoints via research work is often termed academic argument, and it follows a predetermined pattern of guidelines-based writing. After providing a comprehensive introduction to the research topic, you are supposed to state your perspective on the topic in a sentence or two, known as Thesis Statement . It summarizes the argument you will make throughout the paper.

Also, the Thesis Statement often serves as an answer to your research question. Thus, the thesis statement is a must for every research paper and scholarly work.

What is Thesis Statement?

A Thesis Statement:

• Describes how you interpret the subject matter's cause, significance, and results.
• Is a guideline for the paper. In other words, it provides an understanding of the research topic.
• Directly answers the question you are asked. The thesis is not the question itself but an interpretation of it. For example, a thesis can be about World War II, and it should also provide a way to understand the war.
• Claims that other people might disagree with.
• Is a single sentence at the beginning of your paper or near the end of the first para (where you present your argument to the reader). The body of the essay is the rest of the paper. It gathers and organizes evidence to support your argument.

A thesis statement should be concise and easily understandable. Use it as a magnet to attract your readers to keep them reading your paper till the end.

What is the purpose or the goal of the thesis statement?

The real purpose of the thesis statement is:

• To establish a gateway through which your readers can make an entrance into your research paper.
• To bring the entire research paper together to an epicenter of various arguments provided throughout the paper.

Simply put, the goal of writing a strong thesis statement is to make your research paper appear interesting enough for the readers to understand it and prove your arguments right completely.

Additionally, the goal of the thesis statement varies from the kind of research you are presenting. If your thesis provides some claims, justifications, or study, you should present an argumentative thesis statement . However, if your thesis is based on analysis, interpretation, demonstration of cause and effect, comparisons, and contrast, you should develop a persuasive thesis statement.

What is the length of an Ideal Thesis Statement?

You should write your thesis statement in 1-2 sentences. Ideally, it should not be more than 50 words in total.

Also, you should try inserting the thesis statement at the end of the topic introduction or just before the background information.

While writing your thesis statement, be mindful that a thesis statement is never meant to be factual. Your thesis statement is one of the most important elements of your thesis that will help your audience understand what you discuss throughout your paper. So, ensure that your thesis statement must appear like an arguable statement, not a factual one.

Many early researchers or young scholars choose to write factual statements as thesis statements as they are easy to prove. However, resorting to factual statements instead of arguable ones will overshadow your analytical and critical thinking skills, which readers anticipate in your paper.

How to Start a Thesis Statement?

The thesis statement is an outline of your research topic in one sentence. Therefore, you must write it in a concise and catchy style. So, here are a few quick tips that help you understand how to start a thesis statement for a research paper:

Discover Your Research Question

Once the subject matter is finalized for writing a research paper, the next requirement is to figure out the research question. While formulating your research question, make sure that it shows the gaps in the current field of study and should serve as a primary interrogation point for your research.

Figure out the answer and develop your argument

Carry out intensive research to determine the perfect answer for your research question. Your answer should further guide you to structure your entire research paper and its content flow.

For example, if you write an argumentative paper, craft your opinion and create an argument. Then, develop your claim against the topics you want to cover and justify it through various data & facts.

Establish back-up for your Answer with Evidence

The more you research, the more you will learn about the variations in the research answer that you were trying to formulate. Similarly, with various sources and newer evidence coming up, you should be able to make an answer that should stand coherently, correctly, relevant, and justified enough. The answer should enhance the reader’s understanding of your paper from beginning to end.

How to determine if my thesis statement is strong?

Make a self-evaluation of your thesis statement and check if it stands the following interrogation:

• Does it answer the question?

Re-read to understand the question prompt to ensure that your answer or the thesis statement itself doesn't skip the focus of the question. Try rephrasing it if you feel that the question prompt is not structured or appropriately discussed.

• Does my thesis statement appear like an argument (for or against)?

Suppose you have chosen to present the facts and rationality behind it in the best way possible and assume that no one would or could ever disagree with it. It indicates that you've presented a summary instead of presenting an argument. So, always pick an opinion from the topic and justify your arguments backed with various evidence.

• Is the Thesis Statement explicit and specific?

It may lack a strong argument if you have written a very general statement or vaguely crafted a thesis statement. Your audience will figure it out instantly.

Therefore, if you have used words like “good’’ or “bad,” try to put it more specifically by answering and figuring out “Why something is good”? Or ''What makes something good or bad”?

• Does it clear the “So What” test?

After reading any research paper, the prompt question that pops up from a reader's mind is, "So What?". Now, if your thesis statement urges the reader with such questions, you need to develop a strong argument or relationship that bridges your research topic to a more significant real-world problem.

• Does it go beyond the “How” and “Why” assessments?

After going through your thesis statement, if the readers come up with questions like "How" and 'Why," it indicates that your statement failed to provide the reader with the critical insights to understand your thesis statement and is too open-ended. So, you must provide your readers with the best statement explaining the introduction's real significance and the impending need for further research.

Thesis Statement Examples

Follow through with some interesting and creative thesis statements to clarify your doubts and better understand the concept.

Example 1: Social Media affects public awareness both positively and negatively

Yeah, it does answer the question. However, the answer is pretty vague and generic as it shows the effects both positively and negatively.

Not accurately. The statement can be argued only with the people having opinions either on positive or the negative aspect. Therefore, it fails to address every section of the audience.

• Is the Thesis statement specific enough?

Not exactly. This thesis statement doesn't provide any details on positive and negative impacts.

No, not at all. The thesis statement stated above provides no clarifications over how the positive or negative impacts build up or the factors that build up such impacts.

Again, No. It fails to justify why anyone should bother about the impacts, be it positive or negative.

A stronger and alternate version for the above thesis statement can be:

Since not every piece of information provided on social media is credible and reliable enough, users have become avid consumers of critical information and, therefore, more informed.

Even though the above thesis statement is lengthy, it answers every question and provides details over cause, effect, and critical aspects that readers can easily challenge.

Example 2: Analytical Thesis Statement

• Water is extremely important for human survival, but consuming contaminated water poses many health risks.
• The hibernation period is one of the most important periods in animals for healthy well-being. Still, it renders them in a state of weakness and exposed to external and environmental threats.

Example 3: Argumentative Thesis Statement

• At the end of the nineteenth century, French women lawyers experienced misogynist attacks from male lawyers when they attempted to enter the legal profession because male lawyers wanted to keep women out of judgeships.
• High levels of alcohol consumption have detrimental effects on your health, such as weight gain, heart disease, and liver complications.

Tips for writing a Strong Thesis Statement

A strong thesis statement is the foremost requirement of academic writing, and it holds greater importance when written for research papers. However, it becomes more crucial when you want your readers to get convinced of your opinions or perspective of the subject matter.

Below are some pro-tips that can help you crack the code of how to write a strong thesis statement, especially for research papers, thesis, and dissertations:

Keep it specific

Readers often get disappointed and confused when you present a weak argument based on a generic thesis statement. To develop a strong thesis statement, focus on one key aspect and develop it further.

Keep it simple and clear

The essence of your entire research paper is dependent on your thesis statement. Also, a strong thesis statement stays hinged over the clarity it provides. Therefore, don't disrupt the meaning or clarity of your research paper by using some jargonish words or complexing it by combining different concepts.

Ingrain your opinions

Your thesis statement should explicitly display your opinion or position for the subject matter under discussion. Your reader wants to understand your position in detail and the factors you will justify with evidence and facts.

Make it unique and Original

Your audience or the readers have gone through the subject matter several times in their careers. Hence, you must present your thesis statement in a unique and completely original form. Never use generic statements; grow some risk-taking capability and surprise your readers.

Keep it Concise and Coherent

Your thesis statement can be considered good only if it is concise yet informational. Don’t make it wordy in any case, and never go beyond more than 50 words.

Additionally, your research paper will discuss many aspects of a topic. Still, in the end, every single aspect should come together to form a coherent whole, addressing, explaining, and justifying the research question.

Conclusion: How to write a Thesis Statement?

A strong thesis statement is the one of the most important elements of your research paper. The thesis statement always serves as a pillar that carries the entire load of a research paper and it’s several sections.

Whether your research paper is worthy of your audience time or not, entirely hinges upon your thesis statement. A thesis statement always depicts the plan for the research but a good thesis statement reflects your opinions, viewpoints and of course the trajectory that it sets for the entire paper.

So, always try to write a good thesis statement by carefully following its structure, about which we have already discussed.

Before you go: In view of your interest in simplifying research workflows, we suggest you take a look at SciSpace . In a single portal, you can complete all your research writing tasks, including literature searches.

SciSpace provides researchers, universities, and publishers with all the tools they need. Our comprehensive research repository features more than 200 million research papers from multiple disciplines with SEO-optimized abstracts, a publicly visible profile to highlight your expertise, a specially-built collaborative text editor, 20,000+ journal templates, and more.

Hope the article has explained everything that you needed to know about the thesis statement. In case you have any questions or doubts, join our SciSpace (Formerly Typeset) community platform and put your questions there. We will make sure that you get your answers at the earliest.

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8.1: The Place of Emotion in Argument

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We have spent the bulk of this book analyzing arguments’ logical structure. We have mapped out arguments and assessed their reasoning, evidence, and assumptions without referring to our feelings about them. And yet we all know that arguments are not won and lost solely on the merits of the ideas. Humans are not robots. As Jeanne Fahnestock and Marie Secor put it in A Rhetoric of Argument, emotions are “powerful incentives to belief and action." Philosophers and laypeople have long asked what role emotions should have in shaping our ideas. Is it right for arguments to appeal to emotion, or is it a cheap trick? Should we guard against feeling what an argument asks us to feel? Or should we let emotions play a role in helping us decide whether we agree or not?

In one oversimplified view, logic is a good way to decide things and listening to emotions is a bad way. We might make this assumption if we tell ourselves or others, “Stop and think. You’re getting too emotional.” According to this view, no one reasons well under the influence of emotion. Pure ideas are king, and feelings only distort them.

Of course, sometimes emotions do lead us astray. But emotions and logic can work together. Consider Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech. Was it illegitimate for him to ask listeners to feel deeply moved to support racial equality? He famously proclaimed, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” Should listeners have guarded themselves against feeling sympathy for those four children? If we care about things that matter and an argument is about something that matters, then we will and should have feelings about it. King intertwines his logical argument against racism with an appeal to our empathy, tenderness, and sense of justice.

Not all arguments are as intense as that one. Many, such as scientific journal articles, are calm and dispassionate. But all arguments must call on emotion, broadly defined, because they must motivate readers to stay engaged. Even a captive audience could potentially tune out. Every argument needs a reason to exist, a reason why it is important or relevant or just worth reading. It needs to keep us interested, or, failing that, to keep us convinced that reading on will be worthwhile. This reason to exist is sometimes called exigence . An argument can create exigence and motivate readers in many ways, but all these ways depend on emotion.

Besides the basic human emotions we might recognize on a toddler’s face--anger, joy, sadness, fear, disgust, desire, and surprise--each one with many options for levels of intensity, there are others that we don’t always think of as emotion. If we appeal to readers’ self-interest, we play on fear and hope and desire for emotional, physical and economic wellbeing. Another kind of emotion is the desire for belonging, for a sense of being seen and validated. We feel pride in a group or sense of identity or social status, so references to that shared identity or status appeal to this sense of belonging. Our motivation to uphold our most precious values is bound up in deep feeling.

Another form of emotion present in the most seemingly objective arguments is curiosity. This is often combined with an appeal to a sense of pride in our intellectual capacity. Academic journal articles and popular newspaper and magazine articles and nonfiction books must all appeal to readers’ curiosity about the world and its workings and surprises to encourage them to keep reading. An argument may implicitly invite us to enjoy learning and discovery. It can offer a sense of relief, comfort, and pleasure in ideas laid out clearly in an ordered fashion.

Arguments can call on emotions in support of claims, but they can also make shaping readers’ emotions their primary purpose. An argument may set out to define or change how a reader feels about something. Or, it may set out to reinforce emotions and amplify them. A eulogy, for example, is a speech that praises a person who has passed away, a person usually already known to the audience. It serves to help people feel more intensely what they already believe about the value of the person's life.

In this chapter, we will explore how writers use examples, word choice, and tone to affect readers’ feelings. We will look at how writers can vary their emotional appeals in the course of an argument and adapt them to specific audiences. Finally, we will consider how to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate emotional appeals, between those that fit the logic of the argument and those that stray from it.

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Emotion Theory and Research: Highlights, Unanswered Questions, and Emerging Issues

Carroll e. izard.

Psychology Department, University of Delaware, Newark, Delaware 19716-2577; email: ude.ledu.hcysp@drazi

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.

INTRODUCTION

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

THEORETICAL PRINCIPLES

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

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

SEVEN PRINCIPLES

• Emotion feeling ( a ) derives from evolution and neurobiological development, ( b ) is the key psychological component of emotions and consciousness, and ( c ) is more often inherently adaptive than maladaptive.
• Emotions play a central role in the evolution of consciousness, influence the emergence of higher levels of awareness during ontogeny, and largely determine the contents and focus of consciousness throughout the life span.
• Emotions are motivational and informational, primarily by virtue of their experiential or feeling component. Emotion feelings constitute the primary motivational component of mental operations and overt behavior.
• Basic emotion feelings help organize and motivate rapid (and often more-or-less automatic though malleable) actions that are critical for adaptive responses to immediate challenges to survival or wellbeing. In emotion schemas, the neural systems and mental processes involved in emotion feelings, perception, and cognition interact continually and dynamically in generating and monitoring thought and action. These dynamic interactions (which range from momentary processes to traits or trait-like phenomena) can generate innumerable emotion-specific experiences (e.g., anger schemas) that have the same core feeling state but different perceptual tendencies (biases), thoughts, and action plans.
• Emotion utilization, typically dependent on effective emotion-cognition interactions, is adaptive thought or action that stems, in part, directly from the experience of emotion feeling/motivation and in part from learned cognitive, social, and behavioral skills.
• Emotion schemas become maladaptive and may lead to psychopathology when learning results in the development of connections among emotion feelings and maladaptive cognition and action.
• The emotion of interest is continually present in the normal mind under normal conditions, and it is the central motivation for engagement in creative and constructive endeavors and for the sense of well-being. Interest and its interaction with other emotions account for selective attention, which in turn influences all other mental processes.

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

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

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

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

ON THE ORIGINS AND NATURE OF EMOTIONS

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

The Origins of Emotions

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

Thus, emotion feelings can be activated and influenced by perceptual, appraisal, conceptual, and noncognitive processes ( Izard 1993 ), but cannot be created by them. In describing the origins of qualia—conscious experiences that include emotion feelings— Edelman & Tononi (2000) wrote, “We can analyze them and give prescription for how they emerge, but obviously we cannot give rise to them without first giving rise to appropriate brain structures and their dynamics within the body of an individual organism” (p. 15). They maintained that such structures arise as a result of brain changes due to “developmental selection” (p. 79), an aspect of neural Darwinism. Eschewing the cognitive-constructivist approach advocated by Barrett (2006) , Edelman & Tononi (2000) concluded that “the development of the earliest qualia occurs largely on the basis of multimodal, bodycentered discriminations carried out by proprioceptive, kinesthetic, and autonomic systems that are present in the embryo and infant’s brain, particularly in the brainstem” (p. 157).

Emotion Feeling as Neurobiological Activity

Apparently consistent with the position of Edelman (2006) , Langer (1967/1982) , and Panksepp (2003a , b ), I propose that emotion feeling is a phase of neurobiological activity that is sensed by the organism. It is sensed and expressed even in children without a cerebral cortex ( Merker 2007 ). This component of emotion is always experienced or felt, though not necessarily labeled or articulated or present in access consciousness.

Emotion feeling, like any other neurobiological activity, varies from low to high levels of intensity. The autonomic nervous system may modulate the emotion feeling but does not change its quality or valence (cf. Tomkins 1962 , 1963 ). Neither a moderate nor a high level of autonomic nervous system activity is necessary for the emergence of emotion feelings. The conscious mind is capable of detecting and discriminating among slight changes in neurobiological activity and among the resultant qualia ( Edelman 2006 ) that include emotion feelings. [Contrary to earlier formulations ( Izard 1971 , Tomkins 1962 ), neural processes in observable facial expressions may or may not be a part of the critical neurobiological activity involved in emotion feeling.]

Emotion feelings arise from the integration of concurrent activity in brain structures and circuits that may involve the brain stem, amygdale, insula, anterior cingulate, and orbitofrontal cortices (cf. Damasio 2003 ; Lane et al. 1997 ; Panksepp 2003a , b ). Levels of emotion feelings, like other neurobiological activities, range from low and subtle to high and extreme. Current theory and evidence suggest that the feeling component of emotions contributed to the evolution of consciousness and to the affective, cognitive, and action processes involved in goal-oriented behavior.

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

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

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

Feeling is the dynamic component in emotion (cf. Panksepp 2003a , b ) and in two related psychobiological processes—entrainment and individuation (cf. Langer 1967/1982 ). The motivational, cue-producing, and informational functions of feelings enable them to entrain, or simplify and organize, what might become (particularly in challenging situations) an overwhelming number of impulses into focused cognitive processes and a few adaptive actions (cf. Langer 1967/1982 ). Such feeling-mediated entrainment of impulses across situations and developmental time facilitates the formation of feeling-cognition-action patterns that constitute individuation—the organization of traits and their assembly into a unique personality. However, feeling an emotion does not guarantee that it will be labeled, articulated, or sensed in reflective consciousness or at a high level of awareness. The level of awareness of an emotion feeling depends in part on its intensity and expression, and after language acquisition, on labeling, articulating, and acknowledging the emotion experience. These capacities, critical to personality and social development, depend on the neural activity and resultant processes involved in symbolization and language.

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

Motivational and cue-producing emotion-feeling provides information relevant to cognition and action ( Izard 1971 , p. 185). Others have conceptualized emotion as information, and the topic has inspired a considerable body of related research ( Clore et al. 2001 , Schwarz & Clore 1983 ). Consistent with the idea that emotion feelings are cue-producing and informational phenomena, they may also afford a kind of prescience. Feelings may predict the effect of future stimulations by anticipating the link between future critical situations and subsequent emotion experiences and needs, e.g., danger→fear→safety or loss→sadness→social support (cf. Langer 1967/1982 , Vol. 1, p. 101). Such anticipatory activities can facilitate the socialization processes associated with the learning of emotion-related social skills in an imagined or “as if ” world.

Although an emotion feeling may begin to form reciprocal relations with perception or cognition by the time that it is fully sensed, there is no reason to assume that its quality is altered by perceptual and conceptual processes ( Panksepp 2003a , b ). Actually, the particular quality of each discrete emotion feeling evolved because its effects on other senses, cognition, and action are generally adaptive (cf. Edelman & Tononi 2000 ). For all basic emotions, motivational and action processes occur in similar fashion across situations. Among emotion schemas, however, there are wide differences in motivational, cognitive, and action processes across individuals. The determinants of which particular emotion feeling and what cognitive content occurs in a specific emotion schema include individual differences, learning, culture, and the conceptual processes influenced by them ( Izard 2007a ; cf. Shweder 1994 ).

Agreement on Components and Characteristics of Emotion

Though there is no consensus on a general definition of the term “emotion” (cf. Kleinginna & Kleinginna 1981 ), many experts do agree that emotions have a limited set of components and characteristics ( Izard 2006 ). Although they do not agree in all details, they agree that emotions have an infrastructure that includes neural systems dedicated, at least in part, to emotion processes and that emotions motivate cognition and action and recruit response systems. We may also be reaching a consensus that there are different forms of emotions, e.g., basic emotions rooted and defined primarily in evolution and biology and emotion schemas that include cognitive components that differ across individuals and cultures ( Izard 2007a , Panksepp 2007 ).

Emotions as Causal Processes

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

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

TYPES OF EMOTIONS

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

Basic Emotions

In the past, I have used the term “basic emotion” in referring to any emotion that is assumed to be fundamental to human mentality and adaptive behavior ( Izard 1977 ). Recently, misunderstandings and debates about its meaning led me to draw a sharp distinction between basic emotions and affective-cognitive structures or emotion schemas ( Izard 2007a ). Here, consistent with that distinction, the term “basic emotion” refers to affective processes generated by evolutionarily old brain systems upon the sensing of an ecologically valid stimulus ( Izard 2007a ).

Basic positive emotions

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

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

Basic negative emotions

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

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

Basic or fundamental emotions?

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

Emotion Schemas: Dynamic Emotion-Cognition Interactions

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

In the vernacular, as well as in much of the literature of emotion science, the term “emotion” most frequently refers to what is described here as an emotion schema. An emotion schema is emotion interacting dynamically with perceptual and cognitive processes to influence mind and behavior. Emotion schemas are often elicited by appraisal processes but also by images, memories, and thoughts, and various noncognitive processes such as changes in neurotransmitters and periodic changes in levels of hormones ( Izard 1993 ). Any one or all of these phenomena, as well as goals and values, may constitute their cognitive component. Appraisal processes, typically conceived as mechanisms of emotion activation (for a review, see Ellsworth & Scherer 2003 ), help provide the cognitive framework for the emotion component of emotion schemas. Their principal motivational component of emotion schemas consists of the processes involved in emotion feelings. Emotion schemas, particularly their cognitive aspects, are influenced by individual differences, learning, and social and cultural contexts. Nevertheless, the feeling component of a given emotion schema (e.g., a sadness schema) is qualitatively identical to the feeling in the basic emotion of sadness. Though there may be some differences in their underlying neural processes, the sadness feeling in each type of emotion shares a common set of brain circuits or neurobiological activities that determine its quality (cf. Edelman 2006 , Edelman & Tononi 2000 ).

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

Emotion schemas and traits of temperament/personality

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

Early-emerging emotion schemas

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

Emotion schemas or affective-cognitive units?

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

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

Transitions from Basic Emotions to Emotion Schemas

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

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

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

EMOTIONS AND CONSCIOUSNESS

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

Factors Affecting Emotion-Consciousness Relations

Another determinant of our level of awareness of emotion is the intensity of the neurobiological activity involved in emotion feeling. Low-intensity emotion feeling (e.g., interest arousal motivating learning skills related to aspects of one’s work) would not ordinarily grab attention in the same way as a viper and might go unnoticed. In this case (and in other instances of low arousal), “unnoticed” does not mean that the feeling is “unconscious.” It may register and be fully functional at some level of consciousness (cf. Lambie & Marcel 2002 ). The development of theory and techniques to examine the operations of emotion feelings in different levels of awareness should help reduce the number of psychological processes that are currently relegated to the ambiguous concept of the unconscious ( Izard et al. 2008b ; cf. Bargh & Morsella 2008 ).

Emotion Feelings and Consciousness

As the foregoing formulation suggests, the neurobiological processes involved in emotions generate conscious experiences of feelings (emotional sensations) just as in seeing green neurobiological activities in the visual brain create the experience/sensation of greenness (cf. Humphrey 2006 ). The sensory processes involved in emotion feelings like joy, sadness, anger, and fear may represent prototypical emotion experiences. Such emotion feelings are critical to the evolution of human mentality and reflective consciousness (cf. Edelman 2006 , Langer 1967/1982 ).

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

Taken together, these observations on the aftermath of the loss of the visual sensory system (which provides the bulk of our incoming information) suggest that having sensations may be the starting point of consciousness ( Humphrey 2006 , pp. 66–71). The emergence of the capacity to experience and respond to emotion feelings may have been the most critical step in its evolution (cf. Langer 1967/1982 ). Discrete emotion feelings play a central role in anticipating the effects of future stimulations and in organizing and integrating the associated information for envisioning strategies and entraining impulses for targeted goal-directed cognitive processes and actions. The coalescence of the emotion-driven anticipatory processes, entrainment (organizing and integrative processes), and the resultant individuation and sense of agency may have constituted the dawn of human consciousness (cf. Edelman 2006 , Humphrey 2006 , Langer 1967/1982 ).

TYPES OF EMOTION AND TYPES OF CONSCIOUSNESS

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

Basic Emotions and Phenomenal Consciousness

It is quite reasonable to assume that human infants (and all nonhuman mammals; Panksepp 2003a , b ) have some form of consciousness ( Izard et al. 2008b , Merker 2007 ). Wider acceptance of this notion should save young infants a lot of pain. Various invasive procedures (including circumcisions and needle pricks to draw blood for analyses) are still performed without analgesic. The facial expression of infants undergoing such procedures constitutes the prototypical expression of pain. With increasing age, the prototypical expression of pain in response to these procedures alternates with the prototypical expression of anger ( Izard et al. 1987 ).

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

Developmental scientists have obtained evidence that shows that prelinguistic infants not only experience objects and events, but they also respond to and communicate nonverbally about objects and events in meaningful ways ( Izard et al. 2008b ). Moreover, their experience often involves emotion that is indexed by emotion-expressive behavior and other forms of action that influence the social and physical world ( Claxton et al. 2003 , Izard et al. 1995 ). Apparently, these behaviors reflect the development of different levels or complexities of awareness, and further studies of them may offer possibilities of extending current conceptualizations of ways to access phenomenological experiences. These experiences do not fit precisely into the categories of “phenomenal” or “access” consciousness as traditionally defined. Yet these experiences are surely part of the infant’s phenomenology, and the functionality of these experiential processes clearly demonstrates that they are accessible by noncognitive routes ( Izard et al. 2008b , Merker 2007 ; cf. Block 2008).

Emotion Feelings and Phenomenal Consciousness

The conceptualization of emotion feeling as a phase of a neurobiological process is congruent with the idea that emotions can be sensed and registered in phenomenal consciousness and at low levels of awareness without being perceived. Such emotion feelings are often described erroneously, I think, as unconscious emotion (cf. Clore et al. 2005 , Lambie & Marcel 2002 ). What may be unconscious is not the feeling but the perception of the feeling, and this lack of perception could account for the failure of the feeling to register in access consciousness. Insofar as emotion feeling is at bottom sensation, then generating a feeling ipso facto generates a state of consciousness. Thus, an emotion feeling always registers in phenomenal consciousness. Often, if not always, it also registers in some other level of consciousness that is accessible by various routes. After language acquisition, emotion feelings can often (but not always) be reported via symbolic processes. In prelingual infants, young children, and others with insufficient emotion vocabulary, it may be manifested in emotion-mediated behavior (cf. Izard et al. 2008b ). Evidence suggests that emotion feelings are operative and expressible via facial and body movement and other behavior even when not reportable (cf. Lambie & Marcel 2002 ).

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

The concept of unlabeled, unarticulated, and linguistically inaccessible emotion feeling in phenomenal consciousness or some other cognitively inaccessible level of consciousness is compatible with the notion that this component of emotion is felt and functions as a mediator of behavior (cf. Clore et al. 2005 , Izard et al. 2008b , Lambie & Marcel 2002 ). Because it is felt, the emotion feeling retains its characteristic motivational and informational qualities. To say that the feeling component of emotion can reside unfelt in phenomenal consciousness, any other level of consciousness, or the unconscious seems to be a pure non sequitur.

To acknowledge that the subjective component of emotion is felt and real in phenomenal and other cognitively inaccessible levels of consciousness may inspire theory and research on how an emotion feeling remains functional and motivational without being symbolized and made accessible in reflective consciousness via language. Evidence of the functionality of emotion feelings in prelingual infants and children without a cerebral cortex seems to support the argument for more research on the functionality of emotion feelings in phenomenal consciousness. So do the observations that patients who suffer blindsight report feelings without having corresponding visual experiences ( Weiskrantz 2001 ). On the other hand, subjects with blindsight can perceive objects and make accurate perceptual judgments without any corresponding sensation or feeling at all ( Humphrey 2006 ). The extent to which these seemingly disparate observations on people with blindsight inform normative relations among perception, sensation, and emotion feelings is not yet clear. Neither are the effects and limits of top-down control of sensation in relation to perception and to emotion feelings and their registration at some level of consciousness ( Buschman & Miller 2007 ).

Emotion Schemas and Access Consciousness

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

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

Gains and Losses in the Evolution of Emotions and Consciousness

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

Among the finest and most interesting products of evolution was gaining the capacity for language and eventually the learning of vocabulary for labeling emotions and describing and sharing emotion experiences. These gains also helped enable humans to anticipate future desirable and undesirable emotion feelings. Taken together, these newly emerged capacities represent enormous gains in executive functions, particularly for understanding and managing emotions and self-regulation ( Izard 2002 , Izard et al. 2008a ). They have direct and indirect benefits for the cognitive and action processes involved in adaptive idiosyncratic and social functioning ( Izard et al. 2008b , Lieberman et al. 2007 ). Some have argued that the enormous gains that resulted from brain evolution, the acquisition of language, and the accompanying increases in cognitive abilities did not come without some accompanying losses ( Langer 1967/1982 ).

A possible loss: the evolutionary empathy-sympathy exchange

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

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

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

The pros and cons of unbridled imagination

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

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

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

Remarkable Gains from Linking Emotion Feelings and Language

The process of symbolizing emotion in awareness has the potential to add significantly to adaptive personality and social functioning. Language is by far the most common method of symbolization across individuals and cultures, and researchers have verified at the behavioral and neural levels the positive effects of linking words to discrete emotion expressions and feelings ( L. Greenberg & Paivio 1997 , Izard 1971 , Izard et al. 2008a , Kennedy-Moore & Watson 1999 , Lieberman et al. 2007 ). Major among the positive effects that accrue when we can use language to symbolize emotion feelings, especially in early development but also throughout the life span, are those relating to increases in emotion knowledge, emotion regulation, and emotion utilization.

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

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

UNRESOLVED ISSUES AND TOPICS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH

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

Psychologists’ Neglect of Phenomenal Consciousness

Several factors may have contributed to the general neglect of phenomenal consciousness in psychological theory and research. The first is a long-standing reluctance to acknowledge the extent to which emotions drive cognition and action and the possibility that some of the driving emotions register only in phenomenal consciousness. The second is the strong tendency of mainstream psychology to neglect developmental perspectives on critical issues and thus to ignore evidence of the existence and functionality of phenomenal consciousness and other linguistically inaccessible levels of awareness in early development and probably in various forms of psychopathology. A third problem is that many psychologists think that most emotions are episodic, of limited duration, and in focal awareness. A related misconception is that once an emotion episode ends, the mind is free for purely rational processes. This notion persists despite eloquent arguments suggesting that there is no such thing as pure reason ( Creighton 1921 , Langer 1967/1982 ), especially in relation to personally or socially significant matters. Evidence suggests that in humans it may not be possible to study cognition and emotion separately ( Lewis 2005 , Phelps 2006 ). This conclusion is quite consistent with the present position, if the term “emotion” refers to emotion schemas.

A more appropriate goal would be to develop more effective ways to study emotion-cognition interactions and integration/mingling and consequent behavior change, particularly in research that involves constructs like emotion schemas ( Izard 1977 , 2007a ), emotional interpretations ( Lewis 2005 ), or affective-cognitive units ( Mischel & Shoda 1995 ). This would include most emotion research that does not focus on basic negative emotion episodes.

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

More parsimonious and accurate explanations of unconscious behavior might accrue if we looked for mediators of thought and action (e.g., emotions) that reside in phenomenal consciousness. An example is the phenomenological (feeling) component of an unlabeled and thus unarticulated emotion experience, a feeling that you know you are experiencing but cannot specifically identify or describe. Inability to put the feeling into words bars it from linguistic accessibility and thus from access consciousness as typically defined, but not from phenomenal consciousness and various levels of awareness. An emotion feeling in phenomenal and other nonlinguistic levels of consciousness retains its properties, including its power to motivate and regulate cognition and action. Thus, conceptualizing fully functional emotion feelings as processes in phenomenal consciousness ( Panksepp 2005 ) provides an alternative way of explaining much of what has been attributed by others to the psychological unconscious (e.g., Kihlstrom 1999 , Winkielman et al. 2005 ; cf. Clore et al. 2005 , Lambie & Marcel 2002 ).

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

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

The Psychological Unconscious: A Default Explanatory Construct?

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

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

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

The topics of continuous emotion or continuous emotion-cognition interaction and integration, memes, and the mirror neuron system (MNS) may prove to be critical for emotion science and to psychology in general. The idea of continuous emotion in phenomenal consciousness or access consciousness will prove difficult to address in empirical research, but that may soon change with improved technology for studying brain-emotion-behavior relations. Already there is some convergence among theorists and researchers who argue that there is no such thing as a conscious mind without emotion or affect ( Izard 2007a ; cf. Lewis 2005 , Phelps 2006 , Russell 2003 ). The other two, memes and the MNS, relate to emotion and behavior in ways not completely understood. Yet, they have already become hot topics for those interested in new approaches to understanding within- and across-generations transmission of cognitive and action structures and the neurobiological bases for the transmission of emotion feelings in empathy and the processes in empathic and sympathetic responding.

Continuous Emotion-Cognition Interaction

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

I have hypothesized that the brain automatically generates the emotion of interest to capture and sustain attention to particular objects, events, and goals. This mode of operation is standard when the brain is not responding to internal or external conditions that activate other emotions, emotion schemas, or emotion-cognition-environment interactions ( Izard 2007a ; cf. Panksepp 2003a , b ).

A major challenge for future research is to understand how emotion and cognition behave in their continual interaction. One possibility is that they achieve complete integration and influence behavior as a unified force or single factor. However, I propose that although emotion and cognition continually interact, they do not lose their separate identities. They retain separate and distinct functional properties (cf. Pessoa 2008 ). Whereas emotion feeling undoubtedly contains a kind of information ( Clore et al. 2001 ) or cues for behavior ( Izard 1971 , 2007a ), emotion remains primarily about motivation. Cognition (particularly about goal concepts that typically have an emotion component) may be conceived as having a motivational aspect, but it remains primarily about knowledge.

Memes and Emotions

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

In the course of evolution, the brain continued to evolve and increase in complexity until learning via imitation became a major tool in the human repertoire and a way of acquiring memes. Imitation and make-believe play in early development should prove a fertile ground for studying the transmission of memes. Even newborn infants can imitate simple facial behavior ( Meltzoff & Moore 1994 ) that may constitute part of the emotion expressions that they display later in infancy ( Izard et al. 1995 ). By age three years, children show great imitative skills while enjoying the fantasyland of make-believe play and learning socioemotional skills by assuming the roles of persons far beyond them in age, knowledge, skills, and experience. Thus, it was both phylogenetic transmission and the highly creative processes of ontogenetic development ( Noble 2006 ) that produced the capacity for imitative learning, which in turn essentially created a context where memes could replicate and compete ( Jablonka & Lamb 2005 ).

Though memes were originally described in terms of cognition and action patterns ( Dawkins 1989 ), the exclusion of emotion as a component may have been inadvertent. Indeed, emotion schemas seem perfect candidates for attaining status as memes. They not only have a cognitive component but also an emotion component and a kind of action component (the action tendencies in emotion states; Izard 2007a , b ). Thus, emotion schemas are well suited to emerge and operate as memes. Their emotion feeling component is often expressed through facial, vocal, and body-movement signals that are easily imitated, even by young children. In addition, imitating the expressive behavior of another person may activate neural and sensory motor processes that increase the likelihood of experiencing the emotion (and action tendencies) of the other person ( Izard 1990 , Niedenthal 2007 ). Young children’s imitation of their parents’ positive emotion expressions and interactions may contribute to the development of memes that represent significant social skills. Thus, emotion-schema memes (ESMs) as replicant units with a feeling/motivational component seem to be an expectable (epigenetic) extension of biogenetic-evolutionary processes.

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

Emotion schema memes begin to develop early in ontogeny, become plentiful, and may relate substantially to the MNS. There has been a surge of interest in the MNS, in part because it may be among the neural substrates of social perspective taking and empathy (e.g., Carr et al. 2003 , Keysers & Perrett 2004 , Rizzolatti & Craighero 2004 ).

Mirror Neuron Systems, Emotions, and Empathy

If the concept of memes becomes a staple in psychology, it may happen for two reasons. First, perhaps the most interesting and socially significant memes have an emotion component and are essentially emotion schemas whose behavioral manifestations (facial, vocal, gestural expressions of emotion) can be readily observed and analyzed. Second, they may depend in part on the MNS, which seems to mediate capabilities for perspective taking and empathy. The MNS may enable one to take the perspective of another and provide the shared emotion feeling that defines the essence of empathy (cf. Dapretto et al. 2006 , Keysers & Perrett 2004 ). The MNS apparently translates one’s sensory-perceptual experiences and accompanying conceptions of the expressions and movements of others into patterns of neural activity in the observer (cf. Langer 1967/1982 ). This neural activity and its products help the observer to understand and predict the thoughts and feelings of the observed person.

The MNS may relate to sympathy and altruism as well. The cognitive component of an emotion schema, in interaction with its feeling component, may transform empathy to sympathy. This transformation would entail a shift from a response governed primarily by neuro-physiological or motor-system contagion to one that requires conceptual processes (cf. Langer 1967/1982 ). An MNS that facilitates sympathy, altruism, and mimetic processes would facilitate highly adaptive advantages ( Miller 2008 , Talmi & Frith 2007 ).

Empathy alone is not always sufficient to motivate helping behavior ( Rosenthal 1964/1999 ). The cognition (particularly the action plans) in an ESM provides the context for its feeling component, and the interaction of the cognition and feeling in the meme can guide sympathetic actions. Dysfunction of the MNS may help account for the deficits in socialization that are observed in autism spectrum disorders ( Oberman & Ramachandran 2007 ) and in antisocial personality or perhaps in any disorder involving deficits or dysfunction in social skills ( Iacoboni 2007 ).

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

CONCLUDING REMARKS

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

SUMMARY POINTS

• Emotion feelings are a phase of neurobiological activity and the key psychological/motivational aspect of emotion. They constitute the primary motivational systems for human behavior.
• Emotion feelings are prime factors in the evolution, organization, and operations of consciousness and the different levels of awareness.
• The ability to symbolize feelings and put them into words provides a powerful tool for emotion regulation, influencing emotion-cognition relations, and developing high-level social skills.
• The term “emotion” has defied definition mainly because it is multifaceted and not a unitary phenomenon or process. Use of the unqualified term “emotion” makes for misunderstandings, contradictions, and confusions in theory and research.
• Basic emotions, emotion schemas, and emotion-schema memes are distinctly different in terms of their origin, content, causes, and effects.
• Transitions from basic emotions to emotion schemas and emotion-schema memes are major milestones in development and in achieving social and emotion competence.
• The psychological unconscious is an ill-defined and potentially misleading term. There is no consensus regarding its contents and functions. The concept of levels of awareness may provide a better bridge to understanding human mentality and brain/mind processes.
• Emotion utilization is the harnessing of an emotion’s inherently adaptive emotion motivation/feeling component in constructive affective-cognitive processes and actions. Symbolization and effective communication of emotion feelings play a key role in emotion utilization, particularly in real or simulated social interactions.
• The concept of emotion-cognition interaction, well validated in neuroscience and behavioral research, suggests that the presence of functionally distinct features in the interactants would increase both the flexibility and generality of the resultant processes.

FUTURE ISSUES

• Experimental validation of the hypothesis that the feeling component of some emotion or emotion schema is continuous at some level of awareness should prove an interesting challenge for future research. So should studies designed to verify the hypothesis that interest or an interest schema is the default emotion or emotion-cognition interaction.
• Insights on the early development and life-span growth of emotion-schema memes should add substantially to our understanding of the contributions of social and cultural factors in mental processes and behavior.
• Distinguishing between emotion regulation and emotion utilization may provide new insights on the independence and interdependence of these two constructs.
• Determining how the emotion and cognitive components of emotion schemas and emotion-schema memes integrate or mingle in the brain should provide leads for translational research. The findings from such research should contribute to preventive interventions that facilitate the development of emotion and social competence and the prevention of psychopathology.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

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

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

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

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