High effortful control is associated with reduced emotional expressiveness in young children

The current study tested the claim that trait effortful control (EC), the ability to suppress a dominant response to perform a subdominant response, is associated with children's emotion expression. Participants were 206 community children between the ages of 3 and 7 years. Children completed a battery of 10 laboratory tasks to assess temperamental differences in EC, as well as positive and negative emotionality. We report on bivariate associations between laboratory-assessed and parent-reported EC and laboratory-assessed emotions of different valences and intensity levels. Children coded as high in lab-assessed EC exhibited fewer total emotional expressions (positive and negative emotions), and engaged in lower intensity expressions than children lower in EC. Parent-reported EC measures were weakly associated with laboratory measures of emotion.