Regulated expressiveness (the modification of expressive behavior) is a complex phenomenon. Accomplished basically in four ways, regulated expressiveness has developmental dimensions, motivational precursors, and cognitive antecedents, including perspective-taking ability and the growth of self-awareness. Ability to regulate expressiveness appears to be a result of direct and indirect socialization practices and processes. Individuals regulate emotional expression by adopting cultural display rules, by using personal display rules to dissemble, or by engaging in either direct deception or dramatic pretense. Minimization, exaggeration, neutralization, and substitution are ways of regulating facial expressions to control the communication of emotion; these behaviors may be acquired sequentially. Research indicates that children regulate their expressive behavior in order to avoid trouble, sustain relationships, preserve self-esteem, and maintain norms. Probably, socialization practices promote the acquisition of such motives. By the time children enter school they are aware that internal expressive states and external expressive behaviors can be dissociated and that a significant motive for such dissociation is to avoid others' devaluation of one's self. Research further reveals that mothers' control orientation and fathers' permissiveness orientation are associated, respectively, with children's high-level understanding of the affective-expressive behavior of self and of others. (RH)