Applied Animal Behaviour Science 57 1998.

299313

Emotion and self-awareness

Eric A. Salzen

Department of Psychology, Aberdeen Uniersity, Aberdeen AB24 2UB, UK

Abstract
An ethological analysis of emotional behaviour suggests that it consists of somatic and
autonomic elements of behaviours that are thwarted or in conflict unpleasant emotions.. Such
displays change the behaviour of social partners which may end the thwarting, whereupon there is
a relaxation and switch to the intended consummatory behaviour pleasant emotions.. Self-perception through distance exteroceptors allows the individual to respond to its own emotional displays
as if they were those of a social partner. This is the basis of the experience of emotion and of
self-awareness and self-control. Vocal signals give the most veridical self-perceptions and are
produced and shaped by emotional actions. Speech and words may have developed as vocal
signals associated with and symbolizing social actions with particular objects. These symbols are
self-produced and self-perceived so that sequential symbol use, i.e., thinking, becomes possible.
Self-perception begins in infancy with visuo-kinaesthetic discriminations of bodily actions giving
the sensori-motor self. Internal motivational states add hedonic value, i.e., give feelings and a
feeling self. Self-perception of ones own emotional displays forms the emotional self. Finally,
the self-produced symbols me and you establish the cognitive self, and I the self-concept.
Neural feedback processes, from the level of recurrent collaterals of single neurones to that of
cortico-cortical fibres of the neocortex, are not in themselves sufficient for self-awareness.
Feedback from the actions of the individual to the neocortical sensory and perceptual systems is
required if a discriminated self is to be represented in the association areas. These representations
interact with a language system which associates me with the self-representation and I with the
cortical and subcortical processes of perception, action and motivation to give full awareness of
the self. Self-awareness in domesticated animals, as in other vertebrates, depends on the degree of
external self-perception possible, on social organisation, on social communication through emotional signalling, and on acquisition of a symbolic language system. The phylogeny of self-awareness is briefly considered in terms of levels of awareness, from sensori-motor to cognitive
self-awareness, and the evolution of symbolic vocal communication enabling a concept of self and
a knowledge of this concept i.e., cognitive self-awareness.. The development of self-awareness in
the human infant is similarly considered. Self-perception of emotion may be the basis of

Corresponding author. Tel.: q1-224-272230; fax: q1-224-273426.

0168-1591r98r$19.00 q 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

PII S 0 1 6 8 - 1 5 9 1 9 8 . 0 0 1 0 4 - X

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E.A. Salzenr Applied Animal Behaiour Science 57 (1998) 299313

enjoyment and suffering but language may be necessary for a knowledge of these feelings and for
continued suffering in the absence of the evoking stimulus or associated stimuli. The implications
of this analysis for the welfare of domesticated animals are indicated. q 1998 Elsevier Science
B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Emotion; Self-awareness; Self-control

1. Introduction
The existence of conscious experience is known in ourselves through introspection
and in other humans by communication of their introspections. But introspection is itself
a conscious cognitive process and so such knowledge can hardly be said to be objective.
Consciousness involving minimal cognitive processing is that of subjective feelings, i.e.,
feelings of sensori-motor pleasure and displeasure Phenomenal awareness of Young,
1994.. Such feelings are thought to produce the objective observable behaviour of
affective displays and so are commonly accorded to animals. Even a cursory perusal of
the literature on conscious experience suggests that affective feelings, i.e., emotions are
central to the recognition and acceptance of its existence in some degree in animals as
well as in humans. This view is common to philosophers Rollin, 1989. and biologists
e.g., Dawkins, 1980; Duncan, 1981. when considering animal welfare. Humphrey
1981, 1983. saw both feelings and expressions as adaptations to social life and more
recently 1992. has taken the position that sensations are affect-laden mental representations of sensory and motor stimulation and that sentient feeling is basic consciousness. Dawkins 1993. p. 139. has also written that subjective feelings are more basic
and morally the more important aspect of consciousness than is thinking. The latter
has become a popular topic of animal behaviour cf. Byrne and Whiten, 1988; Ristau,
1991. since Griffin 1976. raised the matter as a question of animal awareness and
Humphrey 1976. made it an adaptation to social living.
The feeling in the sense of belief. that affective feeling is the primitive basis, if
not the very core, of conscious experience is so strong that most people and most
theories of emotion regard the experience of emotion as the phenomenon to be
explained, while the physiological and behavioural phenomena of emotion are seen as
mere expressions of that experiential state. If this is the case then emotion can hardly be
the clue to understanding the nature of consciousness and self-awareness, since it is
itself an example of the phenomenon to be explained. However, in 1991, I published an
ethological theory of emotion which, like that of James 1890., regards the behaiour as
the primary phenomenon and the experience as a secondary consequence of self-perception of the behaviour. The theory is distinct from that of James because it is based on the
homology of the conflict and thwarting displays of vertebrates with the acute emotional
behaviour of humans. These are recognisably the same and may well be the reason for
the arousal of compassion in humans for animal distress and for the anthropomorphising
of other emotional and feeling states of animals. These displays have been well analysed
in ethology where they are understood as thwarted action tendencies that have evolved
as social signals of frustration and conflict which serve to facilitate, inhibit, and direct

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Table 1
Terminology of affect
Affect from the Latin affectus A generic term for feelings, emotions, moods, and sentiments arising
meaning disposition.
from the arousal and experience of motivational action states.
Feelings hedonic.
Perceptions of appetitive and consummatory stimuli and behaviour, e.g.,
sweetrsour tastes, being hungry, eating, and being sated. Perceptions are
affective or hedonic when they have motivational significance.
Moods
Enduring motivational states metabolic, hormonal, and cognitive. with
feeling states of the associated specific and general activation systems,
e.g., sexual mood, parental mood, mania and depression.
Emotions
Acute feeling states produced by activation and thwarting of motivated
behaviour and by the cessation of such thwarting, e.g., desire, fear, anger,
joy. Chronic emotional states may result from persistent activation of
thwarting states by mental processes reminiscence and anticipation., e.g.,
dejectionrelation, anxietyrhope, loverhate.
Sentiments
Cognitive constructs and attitudes of an affective content based on past
experience of feelings, moods, and emotions, e.g., patriotic, moral,
religious and aesthetic beliefs and attitudes.

further social interaction. The theory, based on this homology, makes a distinction
between the acute states of emotion sensu strictu. and more enduring affective
sensory-motor feeling states, motivational mood states, and associative cognitive states
or sentiments see Table 1.. This thwarted action state signalling TASS. theory gives a
full biological explanation of emotional behaviour in that it identifies the phenomena
and accounts for their causation, function, development, and evolution cf. Tinbergen,
1963. as shown in Table 2. TASS theory also attempts to account for the experience of
emotion and essays a comparable biological explanation of self-awareness as shown in
Table 2. In order to follow this explanation, a brief re-statement of TASS theory is
necessary.

2. Emotion as the social signalling of conflict and thwarting

Acute emotional displays can be analysed and understood as patterns of conflicting or
thwarted somatic and autonomic actions or action tendencies. In thwarting states, the
appetitive orientation behaviour is increased and this can change the situation and end
the thwarting. This accounts for the association of moderate states of emotional arousal
with learning. In addition, the incipient actions intention movements. of the aroused
consummatory behaviour provide information to the social partner as to the nature of the
thwarted actions, i.e., they can serve as social signals that may affect the behaviour of
the social partner and lead to the end of thwarting, especially where it is the response or
lack of response by the partner that is causing the thwarting. In evolution selection of
thwarted state behaviour has produced the exaggerated and often ritualised emotional
displays of anger, distress, courtship, etc. Thus, unpleasant emotion is the social
signalling of conflict and thwarting. Pleasant emotion is the relaxation of the thwarted
state and the switch to the released behaviour. Relaxation and relief displays signal both

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the end-of-thwarting with the onset of consummatory behaviour and that the social
partner is giving or has given an appropriate response. Thus, by association, pleasure
displays may become social reinforcers or rewards for the helping behaviour. In the
same way, they become associated in the emitter with their consummatory states and so
become secondarily reinforcing or incentive stimuli. This accounts for the secondary
motivational function of emotion in the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain.
But the TASS theory of emotion implies that, while moderate emotional states may
facilitate learning and while emotional states may become secondary reinforcers and be
sought or avoided as desirable or undesirable states, the primary function of emotional
behaviour is to induce social partners to change their behaviour in ways appropriate to
the underlying primary motivational arousal state of the signaller.
Any comprehensive theory of emotion must account for the experience of emotion as
well as for the behaviour. A functionalist explanation, i.e., that the experience is simply
the neural activity peculiar to states of conflict and thwarting, will not suffice because
the crucial question is What is the difference between brain processes of which we are
aware and ones of which we are not aware?. If this question can be answered for the
awareness or experience of emotion then it should also be the basis for answering the
general question of awareness and consciousness. I have suggested 1991. that in the
case of emotion the experience is as though we are perceiving our own emotional
displays much as if we too were a social partner. Thus, part of the answer must lie in the
external signalling function, so that we are aware of our emotional states when we
perceive them in the same way as we perceive the emotional behaviour of our social
partners but with the addition of internal state sensations. Table 2 includes these
suggested answers to the biological questions as to the nature of the experience of
emotional states. What we perceive is not just our internal viscero- and proprioceptive
sensations of the motivational and sensori-motor states accompanying the external
arousing and thwarting exteroceptive stimuli of emotion, but also our own emotional
signalling behaviour received through the exteroceptors, especially those for the distance
sensations of sight, sound, and smell.
But if an individual responds to the affective displays of its social partners and can
perceive its own affective displays as virtually the same, then it can come to respond to
its own affective displays as it might to those of another person. This makes possible
the self-control of emotion by behaving as the recipient rather than as the emitter of the
signals and this could be the basis of the development of coping behaviour. In the words
of Mead 1934., The conversation of gestures is the beginning of communication. The
individual comes to carry on a conversation of gestures with himself. He says something, and that calls out a certain reply in himself which makes him change what he was
going to say. In this way, our emotion can change our own behaviour as well as that of
others. Control over ones emotional state becomes possible after experience of responding to the emotional behaviour and states of other people, for it then becomes possible to
respond to ones own thwarting state and situation and behave as we would to another
individual and with the possibility of doing so with acquired knowledge and experience,
i.e., consciously and intelligently. The emotion may, of course, simply evoke the
unlearned responses so that, for example, fear evokes fear giving the runaway positive
feedback of the state of panic. Loss of self-control of the emotions is precipitated by

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failure of coping behaviour and is characteristic of many neurotic disorders Salzen,

1991, 1995..
3. Self-perception, self-control and self-awareness
Both self-control and self-awareness are especially dependent upon, and facilitated
by, vocal displays since these are most clearly perceied as irtually the same in the
affective displays of both self and social partners. There is evidence that vocalizations
will be shaped by the facial and bodily actions of responses to conflict and thwarting to
give calls characteristic of the thwarting states Andrew, 1963.. Speech must have
evolved from such vocalizations and so is itself a response to thwarting Salzen, 1991..
The evolution of speech and language from such vocal displays in man has facilitated
the development of self-communication and self-control of thwarting and conflict states.
This facilitation is achieved through the use of symbols for the perceived self me. as an
object comparable with other people and other objects others. and for the real me I.
as the perceiving and acting system operating on objects, people, and myself me.. The
question is, what special circumstances facilitated the development of speech in humans
as a response to thwarting? It is perhaps significant that studies of vocalizations in
nonhuman primates show that they can be used in a rudimentary representational
manner, referring to external objects and events in their environment e.g., Seyfarth and
Cheney, 1984.. The extension of this signalling into vocalizations, i.e., words, referring
to social actions in the cooperative handling and use of specific inanimate objects is not
an unlikely step cf. Diamond, 1959.. There is a relationship between speech and
handedness in brain asymmetry e.g., Rogers, 1995. and Parker cited in the work of
Parker and Mitchell, 1994. has emphasised the association of symbol use, imitation, and
self-recognition in the transmission and learning of tool-use in foraging and feeding and
in the evolution of self-awareness. It is possible that speech developed in relation to
actions requiring social assistance with objects in what were evolutionarily new social or
group activities for the human primate, i.e., weapon and tool manufacture and use in
hunting, foraging, cooking, etc. and not for personal interactions which were already
catered for in our primate inheritance of non-verbal responses to thwarting. Speech
certainly enables humans to form larger social groups cf. Humphrey, 1976. but I
suggest that it does this by naming and manipulating people as objects. Non-verbal
signals are still critical for the social communication of feelings and emotions, which at
high intensity render us speechless while a moderate degree of arousal with thwarting is
optimal for speech production.
The point is that words are symbols of objects and actions while vocalizations are
only signs of internal states. The use of symbols means that behaviour can be performed
in the absence of the natural releasing stimulus. Now, non-language animals can make
symbolic associations and learn to respond to symbols. But the symbol itself has to be
present externally. Mental images i.e., neural states of recollected perceptions. could be
aroused by internal motivational state stimuli and these images may be of consummatory
or associated learned stimuli. As perceptions they may be said to be experienced
phenomenal experience . but being internally generated they represent the access
awareness of Young op cit.. Current external input will interact to trigger or give

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predominance to different mnemonic images. Did Pavlovs dogs when hungry have
images of the US in their kennels but of the CS in the laboratory? When hungry we too
may have directly motivationally instigated images of food which may be influenced
and made specific by current external stimuli, including language symbols. In the case
of speech, the symbol is generated as a real-world stimulus for the social partner.
Self-perception then gives the possibility of receiving it oneself as a real-world stimulus
which can produce state changes within oneself which in turn may produce further
speech. Initially in development, speech feedback consists of internal proprioception of
the speech movements plus the re-afference of the externally heard speech sounds plus
efference copies von Holst, 1954; von Holst and Mittelstaedt, 1973. or corollary
discharge cf. Teuber, 1964. of the motor command patterns within the cortex itself.
The heard speech re-enters Popper and Eccles, 1983. the cortical association system
and can modulate action states and their affective processes in the same manner as the
speech received from a social partner. These feedback processes are required for the
imitation that occurs in the acquisition of speech sounds in infants Lewis, 1936..
Subsequently, proprioceptive feedback from sub-vocal speech actions cf. Sokolov,
1972; McGuigan and Schoonover, 1973; McGuigan, 1978. might provide sufficient
feedback for cortical processing sequences thinking. and the possibility of self-regulation Frawley and Lantolf, 1986.. However, it is likely, though I believe unproven, that
corollary discharge cf. Sullivan, 1988. or efference copy feedback of the speech motor
commands alone could suffice for further associative processing. Hence, we may evoke
motivationally relevant images by signalling to ourselves with internal motivationally
generated language symbols which may be unvoiced. If so then the prefrontal modulation of the motivational and affective action systems could give the effect of direct,
unacted and unvoiced intentionality.
The implicit use of speech-based symbols for stimuli and their associated action
events enables SS relations and SR sequences to be refashioned in the absence of the
real objects yet via the sensori-motor and association cortices as if for real objects. This
processing has required the development of the so-called language areas of the posterior
and frontal association cortices. Thus, sequences of symbolically self-induced behaviour
are readily produced and greatly facilitate the cognitive process of thinking. With the
development of language, stimulus associations acquired by individual and social
experience, and by social and cultural training, can be symbolised in speech to re-enter
the individuals motivational and affective action systems and influence or exercise
self-control and internalized social control in the form of sentiments and morals. This
role of self-awareness in the regulation of behaviour has been considered as a cybernetic
or control system by others e.g., Carver and Scheier, 1982..
4. Levels of self-awareness
The simplest and earliest both developmentally and phylogenetically. form of
self-perception is at the sensori-motor level. This may be illustrated with twin babies A
and B when a foot appears in the visual field of, and is grasped by, infant A. The exteroand interoceptive sensori-motor patterns in infant A are different for the four possibilities of A grasping its own foot or Bs foot, or B grasping its own foot or As foot.

Desiderata

Behaviour

Experience self-awareness.

Phenomena
Causation
Function
Development
Evolution

Thwarted somatic and autonomic actions

Thwarting and conflict
Signalling social partner to change behaviour and end thwarting situation
Differentiates with motor and cognitive repertoire
Displays derived from intention movements

Self-perception of thwarted action states

Intero- and exteroceptive feedback of own display
Self-help and self-control made possible by acting as social partner
Speech and language give self, sentiments and morals
Speech and language derived from vocal displays

Table 3
Levels of self-awareness
Level 1. Sensori-motor self Perception of own actions through exteroceptors creates a neocortical representation of the self as a real world
object similar to the representations of other people and objects but distinguished by the concurrent proprioception.
Level 2. Feeling self
Perception of motivationally significant stimuli and actions and the concurrent
interoception adds hedonic tone to the neural representation of the sensori-motor self.
Level 3. Emotional self
Perception of own emotional behaviour displays as similar to those of other people but with added concurrent internal thwarted action.
states gives emotional content to the neural representation of the self.
Level 4. Cognitive self
Perception of own speech and language as similar to those of other people facilitates cognitive interaction
with the neural representation of the perceived self or me which may be addressed in speech and language both by other people and
by the real self which is the motivationally driven perceiving, thinking and acting brain system.

E.A. Salzenr Applied Animal Behaiour Science 57 (1998) 299313

Table 2
Thwarted action state signalling TASS. theory of emotion

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Clearly, a simple associative mechanism could establish discriminative behaviour of A

towards its own and to Bs foot without requiring an awareness of selfunless this
term is given to this discriminative system so that self-awareness simply means
self-discrimination. In the latter case, a fish that does not chase or bite its own tail has a
sense of self and self-awareness. This is the simplest concept or level of self and
self-awareness in the sense of self-knowledge cf. Lewis and Brooks-Gunn, 1979.. Thus,
the integration and association of internal perceptions with external perceptions of the
infants own bodily actions in distinction from other external events gives what might be
called the sensori-motor self. But the actions of the self and of others are also
associated with different internal visceral. and hedonic sensori-homeostatic or motivational. states, so that these may become distinct neural states and percepts forming the
feeling self. This corresponds with the basic level of consciousness posited by
Humphrey 1992.. The same discriminatory associative processes will occur with the
thwarted action state displays emotional behaviour. so that we may also distinguish an
emotional self. The earliest and most effective external self-perception of emotion is of
the infants own vocalizations cf. Ploog, 1979.. Initially, self-perception of emotional
displays such as distress cries will become associated with internal states of conflict and
thwarting and so feedback will be positive or self-reinforcing. However, discrimination
of other infants cries will develop because both the external stimuli and the internal
states are not identical cf. twins A and B. and so differential behaviour develops and
later can give rise to helping behaviour in response to the emotional displays of the
social partner. The development of such social behaviour, therefore, might be a sign of
the development of self-awareness. It is interesting, therefore, that inferring the state of
mind of the social partner has been proposed as a function of self-awareness e.g.,
Gallup and Suarez, 1986, p. 14; see also Crook, 1980 and Humphrey, 1983..
The development of speech in the infant facilitates this discriminatory process and the
full development of the emotional self, capable of appreciating and responding appropriately to the emotional displays which in TASS theory represent intended action states,
i.e., intentional states. of itself as well as to those of others. This level of self-awareness
involves the monitoring awareness of Young op cit.. Language development facilitates
the process of creating a self-concept by the labelling of oneself just as one labels others
and makes possible the employment of objective cognitive responses to the emotional
displays of both other people and oneself. This is the level of the cognitie self or what
might be called the Semantic self since it requires the processing of relationships
mediated by language. It involves the executie awareness of Young and, together with
the emotional self, gives the fully developed social self. Thus, the development of
self-awareness of affect follows the development of bodily sensori-motor and feeling.
self-awareness and, with the acquisition of language, develops into the full cognitive self
with knowledge of self-awareness i.e., knowledge of self-knowledge, Lewis and
Brooks-Gunn, 1979.. These developmental processes or stages begin in sequence, are all
in operation by about 24 months in the normal human infant e.g., the data of Lewis and
Brooks-Gunn, 1979 and Lewis, 1994. and continue to develop together thereafter. They
represent the levels of self as shown in Table 3.
The importance of language both for the emotional and cognitive self is evident in the
development of emotional and cognitive awareness with language development see

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307

Luria, 1978 on Vygotskii.. It is consistent with the introspections of Helen Keller 1909.
of the time before she was taught a language. She wrote p. 141., Before my teacher
came to me, I did not know that I am. I lived in a world that was a no world. I cannot
hope to describe adequately that unconscious, yet conscious time of nothingness. I did
not know that I knew aught, or that I lived or acted or desired. I had neither will nor
intellect. I was carried along to objects and acts by a certain blind natural impetus. I had
a mind which caused me to feel anger, satisfaction and desire. These two facts led those
about me to suppose that I willed and thought. I can remember all this, not because I
knew that it was so, but because I have tactual memory. It enables me to remember that
I never contracted my forehead in the act of thinking. I never viewed anything
beforehand or chose it. I also recall tactually the fact that never in a start of the body or
a heart beat did I feel that I loved or cared for anything. And p. 145. When I learned
the meaning of I and me and found that I was something, I began to think. Then
consciousness first existed for me.
There is no space here to detail the neurological systems or the experimental evidence
that is consistent with this analysis of levels of awareness in terms of levels of internal
and external re-afference and self-perception summarised in Fig. 1. But briefly, the
neural schematic in Fig. 1 implies that self-constructs involve cortical neuronal assemblies especially the association cortices. as a result of input from associated external
perceptions via sensori-motor cortices and internal feedback via spinal, brainstem, and
basal ganglial systems. These assemblies represent constructs of external objects of
which social partners may form a special class. In addition, there is the construct of the
self as a person fashioned in the same way as the constructs of other persons, i.e., by

Fig. 1. The construction of the neural self and others The self construct involves input from all levels of
internal processes and from the individuals own external actions. The other construct infers all levels of
input of the other persons self entirely from the external actions...

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perceptual experience of behavioural interactions, but distinguished by the concurrent

experience of collateral internal perceptions. The formation and interaction of such
constructs is greatly facilitated by symbolic processing, i.e., by language. Feedback
loops, both behavioural and within the neural system, have been invoked to explain
consciousness by Humphrey 1992., and in neurological detail by others such as Popper
and Eccles 1983. and Eccles 1989., but the most convincing detailed neurological
principles are those enunciated by Edelman 1989. in his theory of neuronal group
selection TNGS. applied to a biological theory of consciousness and to which I wholly
subscribe. In the vertebrate, these neural representations are likely to be predominantly
neocortical neuronal assemblies cf. Edelman, 1989; Eccles, 1989.. In the case of the
social partners, they have to be constructed entirely from the observed motor actions
which are the expressions of their sensori-motor actions., feeling motivational.,
emotional thwarting., and cognitive learned and mnemonic. states. In the case of the
self, the same exteroceptive information will be supplemented with the interoceptive
state information see Fig. 1.. In current activity states, the representational person
assemblies will interact with current perceptions in the neocortex and with current
internal states represented in subcortical and brain stem systems. Thus, the perceived
me and others are the neocortical representations of the self and other persons
established through social interactions. The I or true subjective self must then be the
brain systems, largely but not exclusively. sub-neocortical, operating on and with these
objective person representations. It is this interactive process that is conscious
self-awareness. This true self cannot operate on perceive. itself, only the neocortical
re-afferent representations of itself. This is why there is not an infinite regression of
self-perceptions see also Sommerhoff, 1990, p. 172. and why the search for ones true
self is a forlorn endeavour.

5. Phylogeny and self-awareness of emotion

It should now be clear that there is a continuity of self-awareness in the evolution of
the vertebrates. The phylogeny of self-awareness resulting from exteroceptive re-entry
self-perception. begins with discrimination for action of the bodily self from other
objects sensori-motor self ., then for action appropriate to motivation feeling self .,
and then for cooperative action with social partners emotional self .. But why has the
latter self become another rather special. social partner cognitie self . whom we may
ourselves love or hate, admire or despise, pity or condemn? The answer must lie in the
adaptive function of self-awarenesswhich is self-control. At the motor level, this is to
stop biting ones own toes or tail, at the feeling level to avoid painful nociceptive stimuli
and seek pleasurable beneceptive stimulation, at the emotional level to be able to
respond to ones own emotional signals as you would to those of a social partner, i.e., to
take steps to resolve conflict, remove thwarting, and proceed with the aroused motivated
behaviour rather than to persist in calling for help from others, and at the cognitive level
to effect an integration of these controls into a reasonably coherent system personality.
the person. The function of self-awareness then, at the full cognitive level, is not to

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allow the luxury of introspection but as a mechanism or device for the integration of
personal and social behaviour into a single coherent learned self-controlling system.
Hence, the impression, and to some extent the reality, of intentionality in conscious
behaviour.
Both in ontogeny and phylogeny, there is an increase in powers of self-control with
increasing degree of self-perception. The key elements are the degree of self-perception
effected by morphological factors such as the development of a mobile neck and
extended limbs making actions more visible, the development of vocal displays making
self-perception veridical, the development of a special lateralised sequential stimulus-response neocortical associative system making possible sequential self-signalling, the
development of the neocortical system for forming representations percepts and concepts. of objects and especially of the social partner, the development of a memory
system for storing such representations for recall, i.e., representation or imagery, in
response to associated internal andror external stimuli and, finally, emancipation of all
these processes from the immediate presence of the actual stimuli by the development of
the symbol generating apparatus of the human articulatory system. The level of
self-awareness achieved by each class of vertebrate might be conjectured from these
requirements. Sensori-motor and feeling awareness should be evident in fish, amphibia,
and reptiles. The degree of both emotional and cognitive awareness depends on the
development of memory systems for recreating previous perceptions episodic and
semantic. and on social communication, both acting through re-entrant brain systems
and perhaps requiring hippocampal mnemonic cf. OKeefe, 1985. and neocortical
symbol processing systems. These are evident perhaps in a prototypical form in some
birds but typically in mammals, where it is of very limited nature until facilitated by a
productive symbolic systemachieved in some trained apes and in most humans, where
the symbolic system is acoustic and where self-recognition can be seen from about 18
months and cognitive attributions from about 4 years of age onwards Bard, 1994..
This phylogenetic conjecture is consistent with the conclusions of Gallup and Suarez
1986. p. 22. based on experimental studies of self-recognition in animals and human
infants using mirrors, photographs, videofilm and recorded vocalizations. Self-recognition that requires recognition of an integrated self i.e., a cognitively integrated
sensori-motor, feeling, and emotional self-awareness. has been claimed in some birds
and primates e.g., Gallup, 1982; Gallup and Suarez, 1986; McArthur, 1986, 1987;
Suarez and Gallup, 1987.. In humans such self-recognition develops in infancy, with
awareness of emotional states emerging later than for bodily appearance and actions
Lewis and Brooks-Gunn, 1979; Lewis and Michalson, 1983.. There is, however, some
controversy over the interpretation of mirror self-recognition studies in animals cf.
Gallup et al., 1995; Heyes, 1994, 1995, 1996; Mitchell, 1995. and simpler interpretations cf. Lloyd Morgans Canon. in terms of response contingency learning or
kinaesthetic-visual matching have been offered e.g., Epstein and Koerner, 1986;
Mitchell, 1993.. Such interpretations avoid the somewhat futile conceptual and semantic
issues of the self and replaces them with questions of where and to what extent such
behavioural data can be fitted into a hierarchy of exteroceptive and interoceptive
re-afference self-perception. or levels of awareness such as those described in the
present paper or by Mitchell 1994..

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If this picture of the integrated self is correct then I suggest that suffering is the state
aroused in us by the cognitive awareness of the feelings of our own unpleasant affective
thwarting. states and enjoyment is the equivalent state for feelings of pleasant affective
end-of-thwarting. states. However, cognitive self-awareness is not a requirement of
emotion and there is no necessity to posit it in animals showing affective behaviour. But
we can say that such cognitive self-awareness, with its consequential enjoyment or
suffering, will occur in humans and other animals to a degree that is dependent on the
extent to which they can perceie their own affectie displays and those of others in a
discriminable and readily interchangeable manner. See Rozin, 1976, for the relation
between both intelligence and consciousness and the degree of inter-accessibility of
separately learned systems.. For its full development such interchangeability would
seem to require cognitive comprehension and not just perception or even recognition of affective states in self and in others. Thus, in human cognitive processing of
emotion perception can be said to be present when specific emotional expressions in the
caregiver produce appropriate motor responses in the infant. I have Salzen, 1989. called
this process reflexive in that it may be a function of innately developed cortical
circuitry not simple Sherringtonian reflexes. or may involve procedural learning and
memory processes Hirsch, 1974; Cohen and Squire, 1980. in the form of specific
acquired perceptuo-motor processes or habits not simple Pavlovian reflexes.. A
reflexive response would be the distress or protective responses produced by an alarm
signal given in surprise by a social partner. Recognition can be said to be present when
specific emotional expressions in others can produce the same specific affective
responses in the infant, i.e., empathic responding. Empathy is the occurrence of the
same emotional state as that shown by the social partner because of previous experience
of the affective display in association with the situations and the consequences. It is as
though the display alone has become a conditional releaser cf. the common definition
that it is an unconscious projection of the self into the other.. It may require declarative,
episodic or knowledge memory processes Tulving, 1972; Cohen and Squire, 1980.
which may be responsible for the experienced feeling of familiarity. Comprehension can
be said to exist when there are organized relationships of expression, situation, and
consequence, forming concepts in semantic memory processes Tulving, 1972; Warrington, 1975.. Such knowledge of relationships makes possible sympathetic responding.
Sympathy is the arousal of equivalent, but not necessarily identical, affective states
through cognitive appraisal of the observed affective display and the circumstances, and
is a conscious act of identifying with the other person.
These three levels or stages of affective development correspond roughly with the
neonate, the infant, and the child and very roughly perhaps with the phylogenetic stages
of sub-mammalian, mammalian, and higher primate. In development, both empathy and
sympathy are acquired by interaction with the immediate care-givers; normally, the
parents, siblings and close relatives in a family system society. They are later generalized to neighbourhood, region, nation state and beyond. The same generalization may
occur to others of different developmental stage, mental condition, group, creed, race, or
species in an expanding circle cf. Singer, 1981.. Presumably there is survival value
and genetic advantage in the acquisition and application of empathy and sympathy
within the family, the local group, or the state. Where this is the case it will be a factor

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311

in the development and evolution of altruism cf. Hoffman, 1978; Barash, 1982..
Presumably this increases inclusive fitness. An extension to other species raises the
question of runaway effects or orthogenetic evolution. As with sexual selection there is
the danger of bizarre if not maladaptive results if empathy and sympathy are carried
unthinkingly to all creatures great and small. The move from empathy to sympathy
seems necessary since it is not helpful to respond to any distress cry as if it were your
own. Sympathy will give more benefits to animal welfare than empathy. Is the move
from sympathy to the rationality of detached cognitive control also adaptive? Does
rational self-control favour the preservation of the self above all else or is the rational
self being adaptive when depression and suicide strike the non-coping phenotype? Will
the objective scientific knowledge of inclusive fitness provide the ultimate self-control
and override the preservation of the phenotypic self?

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