Maternal Emotion Socialization, Depressive Symptoms and Child Emotion Regulation: Child Emotionality as a Moderator Qiong Wu*, Xin Feng, Emma Hooper and Seulki Ku Department of Human Sciences, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH USA This study tested a model of children’s emotionality as a moderator of the links between maternal emotion socialization and depressive symptoms and child emotion regulation. Participants were 128 mother–preschooler dyads. Child emotion expression and emotion regulation strategies were assessed observationally during a disap- pointment task, and a principal component analysis revealed three factors: passive soothing (including sadness and comfort seeking), negative focus on distress (including anger, focus on distress and low active distraction) and positive engagement (including positive emotion, active play and passive waiting, which was loaded nega- tively). Hierarchical linear regression models revealed that child positive emotionality (PE) and negative emotionality (NE) moder- ated the links between maternal support/positive emotion expres- sion and child emotion regulation strategies. In particular, children’s low PE exacerbated the association between lack of maternal support and child passive soothing, whereas high PE enhanced the association between maternal positive expression and reduced negative focus on distress. Furthermore, the associations of mothers’ support and reduced passive soothing and negative focus on distress, as well as the association between mothers’ positive expression and child posi- tive engagement, were stronger for children with low levels of NE, compared with those with average and high levels of NE. Findings partially support a diathesis–stress model in understanding the effects of both child characteristics and the familial influence on child emo- tion regulation. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Key words: emotion regulation; child emotionality; maternal emotion socialization; diathesis–stress model; maternal depression *Correspondence to: Qiong Wu, Graduate Associate, Department of Human Sciences, The Ohio State University, 166B Campbell Hall, 1787 Neil Avenue, Columbus, OH 43210- 1220, USA. E-mail: joannawu1019@gmail.com Infant and Child Development Inf. Child. Dev. 26: e1979 (2017) Published online 4 May 2016 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com). DOI: 10.1002/icd.1979 Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 1 of 22