Roberts (2009) has argued that a primary goal of parenting is the socialization of personality, writing, “the goal of parenting and schooling is to arm children with skills, abilities, and character structures … we attempt to provide children with personality traits” (p. 138). In explicating how this process occurs, Roberts (2009) pointed to consistent, bottom-up effects of the environment onto temporary states that “take on a significant causal and mediational role as [states] account for the path through which prolonged environmental effects will change neuroanatomical structures or gene expression, and thus change personality traits” (p. 141). The example given in the current context is of a professor who increases course organization, and by extension generalized behavioral organization across situations, because of the continued approval of students for this type of behavior. The student approval generates satisfaction in a social role which acts to reinforce organizational skills. Because these types of environmental experiences are able to get “under the skin” of individuals, “DNA sequences are not the simple, unchanging causal mechanisms depicted in typical biological personality models,” and “environments can and
