A study was conducted in which negative affective states were induced in children by one of several different types of cognition or experience. Subjects were 150 second-grade children, evenly divided by sex, from suburban elementary schools. In particular, cognitive induction procedures involved children's thinking about negative events that might happen to them or to others; experiential induction procedures provided children with an actual aversive social experience or with an occasion to observe another child undergoing a similar aversive experience. Induction procedures were followed by positive remedial inductions, in which the content was social acceptance and the process either did or did not match that of the negative induction. To assess effects of negative inductions and positive remediations, measures were taken of children's subsequent altruistic behavior and of their cognitive abilities as measured by performance on a block-design task. In addition, self-reports of affective social experience were recorded, and videotapes were made of children's facial expressions during the procedures. Except for negative self-cognitions, results indicated that behavioral and cognitive consequences of negative emotion were alleviated when the positive remediation was of the same type as the original induction. Emotional expressions were consistently positive following remediation. Results were considered in terms of differing processes for maintaining negative emotion as a function of the character of induction, and implications for understanding clinical depression in children were noted. (Author/RH)