For maternal negativity, oppositionality, delinquency, depression and anxiety were the phenotypes with which genetic correlations were significant. That is, genetic factors influencing these behaviours were also involved in the experience of maternal negativity. These gene–environment correlations could be active in nature, whereby the adolescent’s genetically influenced behaviour leads them to seek out conflict with their parents, they could be evocative in nature, whereby the adolescent’s genetically influenced behaviour provokes negativity and/or they could be passive, whereby genetic factors that result in negativity on the part of the mother are shared with the adolescent, in whom they lead to oppositional, delinquent, depressive and anxious behaviour. In our Cholesky decomposition no residual genetic variance remained in maternal negativity once that shared with the behavioural phenotypes was accounted for.
