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In this chapter, Dr. Buechler and I suggest some new ways of thinking about emotions in infancy. The concept of emotional development is considered too broad to treat as a single topic. The chapter discusses four developmental processes relating to the emotions and to infant development and infant wellbeing. The expressions of the emotions in infancy are seen as critical in personality integration and the development of infant-parent and other social relationships. The question of the predictive value of emotion response patterns in infancy is placed in perspective, in part by considering the value of studying emotions in infancy apart from the issue of continuity of infant emotion traits. 15Most people agree that emotions play an important role in human development. Many would also agree on a number of other general statements about relationships between emotions, creative activities, conflict, and coping processes. Agreement would be more difficult to obtain, however, when we begin to make more specific statements about how emotions influence other areas of development. Even more controversy would be generated by statements about how emotions in infancy relate to personality and social behavior in later life.Regarding this latter issue, we want to emphasize our belief that prediction of later development is by no means the only justification for studying emotions in infancy. Scientifically, emotions and processes of personality integration in infancy are of interest in their own right. Practically, increased understanding of emotions in infancy should facilitate the nurturance of emotionally, socially, and physically healthy infants, and it is desirable to foster well-being at all ages.We believe that the search for continuities and discontinuities in infancy is very important. We believe that stable individual differences exist, and that those that will be predictive of adaptive and maladaptive personality development will be found in the emotion domain, including emotion-cognition and emotion-behavior relationships. Investigation of these phenomena involves study of infant-environment interactions, a need emphasized by Emde and Robinson (1976). The emotions themselves have a social (expressive, environment-directed, or communicative) aspect and emotion-cognition/behavior

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