Reading focus
Syllabus: Where Do Individual Differences Come From?
Distinguish passive, evocative, and active routes, and compare the theory’s emphasis with Sameroff’s wider developmental account.
Why you’re reading it. Replace the assumption of independent inputs with testable questions about how people encounter different experiences.
A question to consider. Leo seeks a demanding club and its coach gives him extra support. What evidence would distinguish selection and evocation from a claim that either process is genetically influenced?
Why this reading
People encounter, evoke, and select different environments. This influential theoretical account asks how those experiences can become associated with genetically influenced characteristics, challenging the assumption that genes and environments can always be considered independent inputs.
Before you read
Passive gene–environment correlation concerns biological parents supplying both inherited variants and correlated environments. Evocative correlation concerns responses elicited by a person’s characteristics; active correlation concerns the selection of experiences. These are proposed routes to covariance, distinct from an interaction in which an effect depends on a context.
Read for
- Distinguish the three proposed routes and the evidence each would require.
- Identify the premises behind the proposed developmental shift in their relative importance.
- Ask how restricted opportunities and alternative explanations could challenge a claim that people select their own environments.
Consider afterwards
- A child enjoys music, receives encouragement, and joins a group. How could you distinguish active selection, responses from others, and a family environment correlated with inherited differences without assuming the child’s preference has a known genetic cause?
Editorial context
This is a theory with a strong emphasis on genotype-to-environment pathways, not a direct test of every proposed pathway. Its developmental claims should be evaluated rather than treated as a universal timetable. The authors recognize deprivation and environmental intervention; the title does not mean people freely choose every circumstance. Compare its explanatory priorities with Sameroff’s transactional framework, which gives a broader account of reciprocal developmental processes.