The small magnitude of this finding is consistent with findings in the area of affective disorders, where evaluations of this association have yielded mixed or weak results when evaluating disorder status (e.g., presence of depression; Risch et al., 2009) or trait characteristics (e.g., trait anxiety) alone (Munafo et al., 2005). As noted, a recent meta-analysis suggested that the effect of the interaction between 5HTTLPR and stressful life events on the risk of depression was not consistently replicated across studies and that evaluation of overall effect sizes did not support this interaction effect (Risch et al., 2009). However, studies have found far more robust associations with 5HTTLPR for more distinct or clearly defined affective variables, such as amygdala activation (Dannlowski et al., 2008; Furmark et al., 2004; Hariri et al., 2002; Heinz et al., 2005; Smolka et al., 2007), anxiety sensitivity (Stein et al., 2008), HPA axis activation (Gotlib et al., 2008), and attentional vigilance to threat (Beevers et al., 2007; Hayden et al., 2008). This pattern of results highlights the importance of evaluating more elemental characteristics (e.g., amygdala response to
