The purposes of this study were to 1) investigate preschoolers\' decision on emotion display according to their ages, types of situations, types of audience figures, types of affect experienced; 2) investigate preschoolers\' motives for emotion display according to their ages and types of situations. Subjects were 39 three-year-olds and 46 five-year-olds recruited from two day-care centers in Seoul and Kyonggi provinces. Each child was individually interviewed with pictorial tasks. The major findings of the experiment were as follows: 1. There were significant differences in preschoolers\' decision on emotion display according to their ages, types of situations, and types of affect experienced. Five-year-olds could decide whether or not to display emotion more appropriately than three-year-olds. When a situation required emotion masking, children performed better in a negative story; in a situation requiring emotion expression, children performed better in a positive story. 2. There were significant differences in preschoolers\' motives for emotion display according to their ages and types of situations. Five-year-olds responded with more appropriate motives for emotion display, while three-year-olds could hardly respond with appropriate motives. ‘Other-oriented motive\' was used more frequently when a situation required masking of emotion while \'self-oriented motive was used more in a situation for emotion expression.