The purpose of the present study was to examine the prediction of adults' situational and dispositional empathy-related responses from measures of emotionality (emotional intensity and positive and negative affect) and regulation. A multimethod approach including self-reported, facial, and heart rate (HR) responses was used to assess situational vicarious emotional responding; Ss' (and sometimes friends') reports were used to assess the dispositional characteristics. In general, dispositional sympathy, personal distress, and perspective taking exhibited different, conceptually logical patterns of association with indexes of emotionality and regulation. The relations of situational measures of vicarious emotional responding to dispositional emotionality and regulation varied somewhat by type of measure and gender. Findings for facial and HR (for men) measures were primarily for the more evocative empathy-inducing stimulus. In general, the findings provided support for the role of individual differences in emotionality and regulation in empathy-related responding.

Multiple measures of children's emotionality (emotional intensity and negative affectivity), regulation (including attentional and behavioral regulation and coping), and social functioning (teachers' reports of nonaggressive/socially appropriate behavior and prosocial/socially competent behavior; and parents' reports of problem behavior) were obtained for 6-8-year-olds. In addition, emotionality, attentional regulation, and coping were assessed 2 years previously. Social functioning was expected to be predicted by low negative emotionality and high levels of regulation. In general, the data supported the predictions, although the findings for parent reports of problem behavior were primarily for boys. Prediction of social functioning from measures of regulation and emotionality occurred primarily within a given context (school vs. home) rather than across contexts, even though there were relations across reporters within the school or home context. In addition, vagal tone, a marker of physiological regulation, was positively related to competent social functioning and emotionality/regulation for boys, but inversely related for girls.

The purpose of this study was to examine the relations of emotionality (intensity and negative emotion) and regulation (coping and attentional regulation) to preschoolers' social skills (as rated by adults) and sociometric status. Teachers' ratings of children's constructive coping and attentional control were positively related to boys' social skills and peer status, whereas negative affect was negatively related. Acting out (vs. avoidant) coping and emotional intensity were negatively related to girls' and boys' social skills and boys' peer status. In addition, mothers' reports of boys' coping by seeking social support and low emotional intensity were associated with boys' positive social functioning, whereas avoidant coping was positively related to girls' rated social skills. The results are discussed in relation to research on emotion regulation and coping with emotion in interpersonal contexts.

The relations of kindergartners' to 2nd graders' dispositional sympathy to individual differences in emotionality, regulation, and social functioning were examined. Sympathy was assessed with teacher-and self-reports; contemporaneously and 2 years earlier, parents and teachers reported on children's emotionality, regulation, and social functioning. Social functioning also was assessed with peer evaluations and children's enacted puppet behavior, and negative arousability-personal distress was assessed with physiological responses. In general, sympathy was associated with relatively high levels of regulation, teacher-reported positive emotionality and general emotional intensity, and especially for boys, high social functioning and low levels of negative emotionality, including physiological reactivity to a distress stimulus, \kgal tone was positively related to boys' self-reported sympathy, whereas the pattern was reversed for girls.

The purpose of this study was to examine the relations of a measure of children's dispositional prosocial behavior (i.e., peer nominations) to individual differences in children's negative emotionality, regulation, and social functioning. Children with prosocial reputations tended to be high in constructive social skills (i.e., socially appropriate behavior and constructive coping) and attentional regulation, and low in negative emotionality. The relations of children's negative emotionality to prosocial reputation were moderated by level of dispositional attentional regulation. In addition, the relations of prosocial reputation to constructive social skills and parent-reported negative emotionality (for girls) increased with age. Vagal tone, a marker of physiological regulation, was negatively related to girls' prosocial reputation.