A recent emphasis in developmental psychopathology research has been on emotion dynamics, or how emotional experience changes over time in response to context, and how those emotion dynamics affect psychosocial functioning. Two prominent emotion dynamics constructs have emerged in the developmental psychopathology literature: affective variability and socioaffective flexibility. Affective variability is most often measured using momentary methods (e.g., EMA) and is theorized to reflect reactivity and regulation in response to context, whereas socioaffective flexibility is typically measured in the context of parent–child interactions and theorized as the ability to move effectively through a range of affective states. Notably, affective variability is considered broadly maladaptive; however, socioaffective flexibility is theorized to be fundamentally adaptive. Despite these diametric views on adaptability, these two constructs share an underlying dependency on non-effortful emotion change in response to context, which raises questions about whether these constructs are, at their core, more similar than dissimilar. This review examined the literatures on affective variability and socioaffective flexibility in child and adolescent samples, examining associations with psychosocial and clinical correlates, as well as conceptual and methodological similarities and distinctions. Findings indicate that despite considerable theoretical overlap, there are sufficient differences—albeit largely methodological—that justify continuing to treat these constructs as distinct, most notably the influence of parents in socioaffective flexibility. The review closes with several recommendations for future study targeted at further clarifying the distinctions (or lack thereof) between affective variability and socioaffective flexibility.

最近发展精神病理学研究的重点是情绪动力学，或情绪体验如何随时间变化以响应上下文，以及这些情绪动力学如何影响心理社会功能。发展性精神病理学文献中出现了两个突出的情绪动力学结构：情感变异性和社会情感灵活性. 情感变异性最常使用瞬时方法（例如，EMA）来衡量，并在理论上反映对环境的反应性和调节，而社会情感灵活性通常在亲子互动的背景下进行衡量，并被理论化为有效通过的能力一系列的情感状态。值得注意的是，情感变异被广泛认为是适应不良的；然而，从理论上讲，社会情感灵活性从根本上是适应性的。尽管有这些关于适应性的截然相反的观点，但这两个结构都依赖于对上下文的非努力情绪变化的潜在依赖，这引发了关于这些结构在其核心是否更相似而不是不同的问题。研究结果表明，尽管存在相当大的理论重叠，但仍有足够的差异——尽管主要是方法论——证明继续将这些结构视为不同的结构是合理的，最明显的是父母对社会情感灵活性的影响。审查以对未来研究的几项建议结束，旨在进一步阐明情感变异性和社会情感灵活性之间的区别（或缺乏区别）。