A second way in which genes and environment work together to affect child well-being is via gene-environment correlation (rGE). Accumulating evidence indicates that heritable qualities in children and adolescents influence their relationships with parents and peers (e.g., Horwitz & Neiderhiser, 2015). This process is termed evocative rGE, and it occurs when inherited characteristics in the child evoke a response from the environment. Two separate adoption studies have found evidence for evocative rGE in late childhood through late adolescence: in both studies, children whose biological parents were more antisocial were more likely to receive negative or hostile parenting from their adoptive parents than children without this inherited risk (Ge et al., 1996; O’Connor et al., 1998). Twin studies have also reported evidence of heritable qualities in children evoking parental behavior across a wide range of parenting constructs and child ages (see Klahr et al., 2014 for a meta-analysis).
