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In psychology, emotional expressions are observable verbal and nonverbal behaviors that communicate an internal emotional or affective state. Examples of emotional expression are facial movements such as smiling or scowling, or behaviors like crying or laughing. Emotional expressions can occur with or without self-awareness. Presumably, individuals have conscious control of their emotional expressions; however, they need not have conscious awareness of their emotional or affective state in order to express emotion. Over the last 200 years, researchers have proposed different and often competing models explaining emotion and emotional expression going all the way back to Charles Darwin. However, all theorists in emotion agree that all normal, functioning humans experience and express emotions with their voices, faces, and bodies.

Models of Emotion
There are many different theories about the nature of emotion and the way that it is represented in the brain and body. Of the elements that distinguish between the theories of emotion, perhaps the most salient is differing perspectives on emotional expression. Some theories about emotion consider emotions to be biologically basic and stable across people and cultures. These are often called "basic emotion" perspectives because they view emotion as biologically basic. From this perspective, an individual's emotional expressions are sufficient to determine a person's internal, emotional state. If a person is smiling, they are happy. If they are crying, they are sad. Each emotion has a consistent and specific pattern of expressions and that pattern of responses is only expressed during that emotion and not during other emotions. Some theories of emotion think that emotional expression is more flexible and that there is a cognitive component to emotion. These theories account for the malleability in emotion by proposing that we appraise situations and, depending on the result of our appraisal, this will trigger different emotions and the corresponding expressions of emotion. The tendency to appraise certain situations as one emotion or another can vary by person and culture; however, appraisal models still maintain that there are basic responses that are specific and consistent to each emotion that we feel. Other theories of emotion propose that emotions are constructed based upon the person, situation, culture, and past experiences and that there are no preset emotional responses that are consistent and specific to one emotion or another.

Basic Model
The Basic model of emotions finds its roots in Charles Darwin's The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals (EEMA). Darwin claimed that the expression of emotions involves many systems: (1) facial expression, (2) behavioral response and (3) physical responses, which includes physiological, postural and vocal changes. Most importantly, Darwin claimed that emotional expression was consistent with his theories on evolution and thus, the expression of emotion is universal and should therefore be expressed similarly across race or culture. Lastly, primates and animals exhibit precursors of muscle actions of the facial expressions of humans. Many researchers have expanded on Darwin's original theories on emotional expression. Paul Ekman, Carroll Izard and colleagues were the first to test Darwin's theory. These psychologists, through cross-cultural empirical tests found that there were a number of basic emotions that were universally recognized. Later studies revealed that facial expressions are unique to each emotions and are signals that convey information of one's internal state, and this information is used to coordinate social interactions. . Overall, the Basic emotion perspective assumes that emotions are unique events that occur as a result of special mechanisms and each emotion has its own respective specific brain circuit. Moreover, the expression of each emotion has its own respective response, manifestation in face, voice and body. The basic emotion view led Paul Ekman has gone on to create the FACS (Facial Action Coding System) and F.A.C.E (Facial Expression Awareness Compassion Emotions). FACS is a database of compiled facial expressions, wherein each facial movement is termed an action unit (AU). F.A.C.E explains how to become keen at observing emotion in the faces of others. It consists of the Micro Expression Training Tool (METT), which trains individuals to disambiguate between emotional expressions through recognizing distinct facial expressions that are unique to each emotion. The second part of this training program trains individuals to read micro expressions; a face elicits an emotion very quickly and the individual is prompted to report which emotion was seen. The Subtle Expression Training Tool (SETT) trains individuals to be able to recognize the subtle changes in a person's facial expression due to slight changes in emotional experiences. These subtle expressions can occur at the onset of emotions, or when an individual is actively suppressing the emotion.

Appraisal Model
Appraisal models of emotion state that emotions are triggered by mental states that are truly unique in both form and function. Appraisal models are similar to the basic model of emotion in that both views consider that, once an emotion is triggered, emotional expressions are biologically predetermined and are displayed only in one emotion and every time that emotion is expressed. The main difference between basic emotion models and appraisal models is that appraisal models assume that there is a cognitive antecedent that determines which emotion is triggered. Traditional appraisal theories consider appraisals to be universal and like a set of switches that can be turned on by biological and environmental triggers. When a person makes an appraisal, an individual will react with an appropriate, emotional response that can include an external, emotional expression. More recent appraisal models account for variation in emotional expression by suggesting that cognitive appraisals are more like themes that can be triggered by a number of different actions and situations. Emotional expressions arise from these appraisals, which essentially describe the context of the situation. One appraisal model has developed the law of situational meaning, which states that emotions tend to be evoked by certain kinds of events. For example, grief is elicited by personal loss. In this case, personal loss would be the appraisal and one can express grief through emotional expressions.

Psychological Construction Model
Another model of emotion, called psychological construction, describes emotion as a construction that results from more basic psychological processes. In a psychological construction model, basic psychological processes like affect (positive or negative feeling combined with some degree of physiological activation), previous experiences, language, and executive functioning combine to form a discrete emotion experience. While some discrete emotions tend to have typical responses (e.g. crying when sad, laughing when happy) a psychological construction model can account for the wide variability in emotional expression (e.g. crying when extremely happy; laughing when uncomfortable). Psychological construction models call into question the assumption that there are basic, discrete emotion expressions that are universally recognized. Many basic emotion studies use highly posed, stereotypical facial expressions as emotional signals such as a pout, which would indicate one is feeling sad. These facial expressions can be better understood as symbols of emotion rather than signals. While these symbols have undeniable emotional meaning and are consistently observed during day-day emotional behavior they do not have a 1-to-1 relationship a person's internal mental or emotional state. For example, not everyone furrows their brow when they are feeling angry. Moreover, these emotional symbols are not universal due to cultural differences. For example, when Western individuals are asked to identify an emotional expression on a specific face, in an experimental task, they focus on the target's facial expression. Japanese individuals use the information of the surrounding faces to determine the emotional state of the target face. This challenges experiments that solely use a presentation of an isolated emotional expression in experiments because it is reflecting just a Western notion of emotion.

Social Construction Model
Social construction models generally say that there is no biological circuitry for emotions since emotions are solely based on experience and context. Some even suggest that certain emotions can only exist in the reciprocal exchanges of a social encounter. Since there are unique local languages and local moral orders, cultures can use the same emotion and expression in very different ways. Thus, emotional expressions are culturally-prescribed performances rather than internal mental events. Knowing a social script for a certain emotion allows one to enact the emotional behaviors that are appropriate for the cultural context. Emotional expressions serve a social function and are essentially a way of reaching out to the world.

The Affective Circumplex
In general, a circumplex is a mathematical tool used to show structure through the geometry of a circle with a set of axes. The affective circumplex is used as a descriptive tool to represent one’s core affective state in any given moment. In research, it can be used to assess people’s responses to certain objects or stimuli. The circle depicts the similarity between objects based on people’s responses to them, and the axes represent the psychological properties that can measure what is similar or different about those responses. It has valence on its horizontal axis and arousal on its vertical axis. The valence axis ranges from pleasant states to unpleasant states while the arousal axis ranges from high activity and attention to low activity and sleepiness. The circumplex is useful because reports of emotional experience contain multiple properties. It seems that all humans can differentiate between pleasant and unpleasant affective states; however, not many people actually characterize their affect as high or low in activation. Valence and arousal better represent the content of the emotional experience.