Welcome to Gaia! ::

Let's say, for the sake of this discussion, that there is intelligent life out there.

I've noticed that when we entertain this notion, we tend to portray alien life as either malevolent and solely focused on survival at all costs, or empathetic beyond the capacity of human understanding. I find it interesting that our concerns regarding socialization with aliens seem to be along the lines of "friend or foe?", when on Earth alone we view a very small number of species in this manner to begin with, simply because it is not applicable to most species with which we are familiar.

It's been suggested that insects could teach us a good deal about potential alien life forms based on their evolutionary trajectory being so far removed from our own. While it could be debatable that insects feel emotion, the general consensus is that they don't; they just sort of exist. Humans (along with many mammals) evolved feelings as a survival/protective device. They aren't a necessity to simply live, and, as far as we know, not an evolutionary given.

Do you think emotions come with evolved intelligence? Or is it quite likely that even if we are not alone in the universe, we might be alone in our feeling and empathy?

It is debatable, yes. Some evidence does suggest that they may indeed feel emotions.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-bees-have-feelings/

It could be that an alien life form would have something of an emotional life, but maybe one very different from ours. Maybe they would feel emotions of which we couldn't even conceive.

One really weird thing is, we still don't know exactly how consciousness works. It is very strange and hard to figure it out.