Longstanding neuroscientific debate concerns the hemispheric lateralization of emotions. Four competing views prevail. The Right-Hemisphere Model holds that all emotions are right lateralized; the Valence Model, that negatively- and positively-valenced emotions are right- and left-lateralized, respectively; the Approach-Avoidance Model, that approach- and avoidant-type emotions are left- and right-lateralized, respectively; and the Emotion-Type Hypothesis, that Ekman’s six basic emotions are right-lateralized, and all other emotions are left-lateralized and socially constructed. One limitation of these models is that they do not clearly distinguish the inner mental experience of the emotions from the perception of emotions expressed by others. An emotion–lateralization model focused on the individual’s inner experience of basic emotions, the Feeling–Function Model, is presented. A nearly universal ethogram that identifies the four most fundamental problems of life is described; it is proposed that the prototypical adaptive reactions to negative and positive experiences of these life-problems comprise the basic emotions. A focused review of the neuroscientific evidence supports the theoretical proposition that four basic emotions—sadness, fear, anticipation, and acceptance—are predominantly right-lateralized, and their four opposites—happiness, anger, surprise, and disgust, respectively—are left-lateralized. This emotion-lateralization model theorizes that experience of the right-lateralized emotions significantly involves global feeling-states, or states of awareness of somatic, physiological changes in mind, body, and self that precede and stimulate the right-hemisphere-based emotions. In contrast, cognitive interpretation of a situation stimulates the function-oriented left-hemisphere-based basic emotions.