Child Development, zyxwvutsr April 1998, Volume 69, Number 2, Pages 359-374 Fear and Anger Regulation in Infancy: Effects on the Temporal Dynamics of Affective Expression zyxw Kristin A. Buss and H. Hill Goldsmith Emotion regulation has been conceptualized as the extrinsic and intrinsicprocesses responsible for monitoring, facilitating, and inhibiting heightened levels of positive and negative affect. Regulation of distress is related to the zyxwvuts use of certain behavioral strategies. Our study examined whether putative regulatory behaviors widely assumed to be conceptually associated with these strategies are actually empirically associated with the changes in fearful and angry distress in 6-, 12-, and 18-month-oldinfants. Our key finding was that the use of some putative regulatory behaviors (eg., distraction and approach) reduced the observable intensity of anger but were less effective in reducing the intensity of fear. The results suggest (1) caution in assuming that postulated regulatory behaviors actually have general distress-reducing effects and (2) the likelihood that “distress” is too global a construct for research on emotion regulation. INTRODUCTION The surge of recent interest in emotion regulation in infants, young children, and adolescents has pro- vided the developmental community with a wealth of descriptions of this phenomenon. These descrip- tions of emotion regulation are multifaceted and cover a broad range of psychological domains. The regulation of emotions has been investigated by de- velopmentalists concerned with issues of socializa- tion (Eisenberg et al., 1993; Eisenberg et al., 1995; Saarni, 1993), social adaptation (Rubin, Coplan, Fox, zyxwvutsrq & Calkins, in press), attachment (Braungart & Stifter, 1991; Cassidy, 1994; Hofer, 1994), maternal sensitivity and responsiveness (Field, 1994), and the developmental mechanisms of psychopathology (Cole, Michel, & ODonnell Teti, 1994). Individual differences related to emotions and regulation have been investigated in the context of validating temper- ament theories (Rothbart & Posner, 1985), testing physiological methods (Dawson, 1994; Fox, 1994; Porges, Doussard-Roosevelt, & Maiti, 1994; Stans- bury & Gunnar, 1994),and illustrating stress and cop- ing models (Lazarus, 1991;Lazarus & Folkman, 1984; Nachmias, Gunnar, Mangelsdorf, Parritz, & Buss, 1996). Within these domains of research, there is widespread recognition that the ability to regulate emotions is a major goal of social development (Garber & Dodge, 1991).Some research has focused on the development of skills (e.g., behavioral strate- gies) that are important in the regulation of emotion (Kopp, 1989; Mangelsdorf, Shapiro, & Marzolf, 1995; Rothbart, Ziaie, & O’Boyle, 1992). The current investi- gation was designed to investigate the nature of these behavioral strategies and their effects on emotion ex- pression in infancy. Changing Concepts of Emotion and Emotion Regulation During the past decade, the conceptualization of emotions and regulation has been changing. For ex- ample, the functionalist perspective (Barrett & Campos, 1987) has provided a broader view of the experience of emotions. The current conceptualiza- tion among functionalists is that emotions are pro- cesses of establishing, maintaining, or disrupting (i.e., regulating) the relation between the organism and the environment (Campos, Campos, & Barrett, 1989). Emotions, according to this perspective, are regula- tors of social interactions. Therefore, regulation be- comes an integral part of the experience of emotions. This perspective contrasts to the more traditional view that emotions are internal feeling states that are behaviorally expressed (e.g., via the face or voice). Also according to a traditional view, the function of emotion regulation is to alter the external behavioral expression by, for example, using display rules (Ek- man, 1984). Based on these two perspectives, we can see that emotions can be viewed as both regulating and regulated. For example, a fearful infant’s distress can be regulated by a caregiver’s soothing while at the same time, the infant’s state of fear regulates the infant’s own interaction with the stimulus which in- stigated the original reaction. Many developmentalists propose definitions of emotion regulation that focus on the facilitation and inhibition of emotional reactivity. Emotion regula- tion has been conceptualized as the extrinsic and in- trinsic processes responsible for monitoring, evaluat- z 0 1998 by the Society for Research in Child Development, Inc. All rights reserved. 0009-3920 /98 /6902-0018$01.00