In this paper we take a discrete emotions approach to personality development. We suggest that individual differences in affective organization, acquired during the course of development, result in affect‐specific biases in expressive patterns and idiosyncratic perceptual organizations. These affective biases, which have a pervasive influence on a wide domain of individual and interpersonal behaviours, contribute to psychological continuities that we identify as emotional traits. An array of data in support of this proposition is detailed. We propose a developmental model of how such affective organizations may be established initially, and the mechanisms by which they become consolidated over time. A final section discusses broader implications for developmental theor