Emotional expression

An emotional expression is a behavior that communicates an emotional state or attitude. It can be verbal or nonverbal, and can occur with or without self-awareness. Emotional expressions include facial movements like smiling or scowling, simple behaviors like crying, laughing, or saying "thank you," and more complex behaviors like writing a letter or giving a gift. Individuals have some conscious control of their emotional expressions; however, they need not have conscious awareness of their emotional or affective state in order to express emotion.

Researchers in psychology have proposed many different and often competing theoretical models to explain emotions and emotional expression, going as far back as Charles Darwin's discussion of emotion as an evolved capacity. Though there is no universally accepted theory of emotion, theorists in emotion agree that experience of emotions and expression of them in a variety of ways, such as with voices, faces, and bodies, is key to human communication. The cultural norms and beliefs of a society also affect and shape the emotional expressions of its members, and expressions appropriate and important in one culture may be taboo in another.

High expressiveness could be useful in constructively resolving relationship-related conflict.

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 a person is 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. Facial emotional expressions are particularly salient stimuli for transferring important nonverbal signals to others. For that reason, emotional expressions are the best direct indicators of affective attitudes and dispositions. There is growing evidence that brain regions generally engaged in the processing of emotional information are also activated during the processing of facial emotions.

Some theories of emotion take the stance 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 humans appraise situations and, depending on the result of their appraisal, different emotions and the corresponding expressions of emotion are triggered. 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 humans 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. Darwin claimed that the expression of emotions involves many systems: facial expression, behavioral response, and physical responses, which include 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. This is known as the universality hypothesis. Lastly, primates and animals exhibit precursors of muscle actions of the facial expressions of humans. These psychologists, through cross-cultural empirical tests found that there were a number of basic emotions that were universally recognized. Later studies suggested that facial expressions are unique to each emotion and are signals that convey information of one's internal state, and this information is used to coordinate social interactions.

Further, recent research on emotional expression across different cultures indicates that while some emotions, such as fear response, appear to be universally experienced, the way emotions are expressed tends to vary significantly depending on cultural context, occasionally for basic emotions as well. This variation can be attributed to differences between independent and interdependent cultures, which shape individuals' perceptions of the self and influence the specific emotions that are emphasized within each cultural framework. As a result, cultural norms and values directly affect how individuals express their emotions, highlighting the complex interplay between cultural background and emotional experience.

The basic emotion view brought Ekman to create the Facial Action Coding System (FACS) and Facial Expression Awareness Compassion Emotions (FACE). FACS is a database of compiled facial expressions, wherein each facial movement is termed an action unit (AU). FACE 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 microexpressions; 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 propose that emotions are triggered by specific mental states, each with their own distinct form and function. Like the basic model of emotion, appraisal models suggest that once an emotion is activated, its expression is biologically programmed and manifests consistently whenever that emotion is experienced.

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. Emotions go beyond simple judgments of stimuli in our environment and are forms of motivation that drive action. 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.

The appraisal model supports the idea that emotions are not solely positive or negative attitudes towards an attitude object, but they are motivated states that drive action.

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.

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. Research by Barrett et al. (2019) challenges the idea that facial expressions directly correspond to specific emotions, arguing instead that their meaning is shaped by context and prior experience. 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 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.

Emotion regulation

Various researchers have highlighted the importance for an individual of being able to successfully regulate emotions. Regulation is an active, goal-oriented process that aims to manage emotional responses. Ways of doing this include cognitive reappraisal (interpreting a situation in positive terms) and expressive suppression (masking signs of inner emotional states). Humans can quickly identify happy expressions whereas the disgust expression takes longer to identify.

Emotional dysregulation is also closely linked to trauma, particularly in children and adolescents. Research suggests that youth with histories of trauma are significantly more likely to experience challenges in emotion regulation, which can manifest as heightened emotional lability, aggression or difficulty calming down after stress. Richard Gunderman refers to emotional intelligence as a type of intelligence, in addition to the commonly used definition. He has defined it as "the ability to understand and respond to emotions in daily life".

Disorders

There are a few disorders that show deficiency in emotional expression and response. These include alexithymia, autism, hypomimia and involuntary expression disorder.

In the context of the extended process model of emotion regulation, difficulties in any of the stages (i.e. identification, selection, implementation and monitoring) can significantly contribute to the development of various disorders, as mentioned earlier. in which deficits in emotional expressions are primary, other disorders and impairments can effect emotional expression and recognition of emotional expression. Studies show that impairment, such as stroke or damages, to the right parietal lobe, right somatosensory cortex, and cerebellum can impair recognition of facial emotional expressions and can impair visual representation of emotional expressions. Patients with Alzheimer's, Parkinson's disease, and Huntington's disease, and individuals with traumatic brain injuries and temporal lobe epilepsy, also demonstrate distorted facial emotional expression. Both schizophrenia and antisocial personality disorder have similar effects on emotional expression in patients diagnosed with these disorders. For both disorders, patients experience symptoms such as reduced ability to perceive and express emotions and high sensitivity to emotional expressions of negative emotions such as fear and anger. When investigating the types of emotions experienced, there are two kinds known as socially engaging emotions and socially disengaging emotions.

Cross-cultural developmental differences

Additionally to social scripts on which emotions are more valued cross-culturally, the development of emotional expressions reflects the preference for socially engaging and disengaging emotions, and the preference for more positive or balanced emotions that differed across Western and Eastern cultures. Studies conducted with Thai and American mothers revealed that children learn how to express emotions in a way that is appropriate for their cultures from their primary caregivers. There is evidence that the intensity of emotional expressions, the channels through which they are expressed (e.g., behavioural, verbal, etc.), and the emotions expressed by parents all play a role in how infants form culturally appropriate emotional expressions. Similar differences in expressions of emotions are also found in Russian and American children's stories. American parents tend to tell stories that have less negative emotions than Russian parents. American children's books contain a lower degree of negative emotions compared to Russian children's books.

The intensity of emotional interaction was found to be higher in American mothers compared to the intensity of behavioural emotional interaction in Thai mothers.

Researchers note that there a number of important benefits to expressing emotions selectively. In the case of distress, expression can help people take control of their emotions and facilitate "mean-making" to help them reappraise their situation. For instance, emotional expression through writing can help people better understand their feelings, and subsequently regulate their emotions or adjust their actions. In research by James W. Pennebaker, people who observed a traumatic death showed more improvements in physical health and subjective well-being after writing about their emotions over several days. This research also shows that these benefits only appear when individuals undergo a cognitive change, such as in gaining insight about their experience.

Emotional expression has social implications as well. Since emotions are related to our needs, it is important that they are expressed to others who care about our needs. Expression to someone with whom there is no desire to form a relationship is likely to receive no response. However, when an individual expresses to someone who responds with empathy, their relationship with that person can improve. Like with writing, hearing another person's perspective can help people reappraise the situation that incited those emotions.