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One of the key roles of parents is to help children learn to modulate their affects

Affects are contagious. It is hard to see someone smiling or weeping and not feel sad or happy yourself. Infants and young children express affect without modulation and it can completely take over our consciousnes, as anyone who has ever been on an airplane with a screaming baby can attest. Parents soothe children by holding, rocking, singing, distracting, and so on. As a child grows, good parents help him or her learn to modulate affect according to the rules of the particular culture and family. This learning and life experience creates much of the interesting variation in affect expression in different cultures (stoicism in many northern European peoples; vivaciousness and expressiveness in some from southern Europe.)

Our ability to manage our affects has an enormous influence on relationships and life course. People who cannot modulate their anger, shame or other affects may