The notion that an individual would be genetically predisposed to create for themselves an environment comprising multiple ‘stressors’ may at first glance seem counterintuitive. How could such genes evolve? To take antisocial behaviour as an example, we know that antisocial behaviour is under genetic influence. An individual predisposed to such behaviour will be more successful in some environments than others. Most probably, they will achieve the greatest success in settings in which rule-breaking or aggressive behaviour is (A) accepted (i.e. is unlikely to lead to rejection or other negative consequences) and is (B) associated with positive outcomes. Research has shown that in deviant peer environments antisocial behaviour is associated with popularity (Allen et al. 2005) and dominance (Hawley et al. 2008), and so can be considered to be accepted and associated with positive outcomes in such environments. In this manner something that we may initially conceptualise as a ‘negative life event’—expulsion from school for example—may in fact result in the adolescent leaving an environment that is not matched with their genotype, and in which they are unlikely to achieve success
