If you don't have The Sims 3, the emotional paintings can be used in the same way as well. If you have a painter, just have them paint when they are in the emotion you want, and enable the aura by clicking on it just like the lamps. Or, if you have GTW, you can make a retail gallery with emotional paintings for sale, too. There are a lot of rooms in the Maxis Gallery with the groups of paintings already done, available for download.
There are actually quite a few objects in the build/buy catalog with this ability. Almost all of the collected items, and the reward items are able to be set up this way. The paintings are one of my favorites, tho, because they don't take up table slots, and look really normal.