Research Article You Can’t Always Get What You Want Effortful Control and Children’s Responses to Undesirable Gifts

ABSTRACT—This study examined individual differences in children’s regulation of emotional expression after re-ceiving desirable and undesirable gifts. Effortful control, the ability to suppress a dominant response in favor of a subdominant one, was measured using a battery of be-havioral tasks. Reactions to the gifts were videotaped, and emotional expression was coded. Age predicted effortful control, but not emotional displays. Effortful control predicted similarity of children’s displays of positive affect after receiving the two gifts. Specifically, children high in effortful control showed similar amounts of posi-tive affect after receiving the desirable and undesirable gifts, whereas children low in effortful control showed less positive affect after receiving the undesirable gift than after receiving the desirable gift. Results are discussed i