 16. Personality and Parenting 359
traits (i.e., fearfulness, negative emotional -
ity, self-  regulation, self-  esteem, aggression) 
during both childhood and adolescence 
(Bates & Pettit, 2007; de Haan, Prinzie, 
& Dekovi ć, 2010). In fact, a recent meta- 
analysis demonstrates that children’s tem -
peramental traits lead them to be more (or 
less) susceptible to certain kinds of parent -
ing behaviors (Slagt, Dubas, Dekovi ć, & van 
Aken, 2016). Specifically, across 84 studies, 
researchers found that children with diffi -
cult temperamental traits (i.e., negative emo -
tionality) were more likely to be susceptible 
to negative parenting behaviors (though they 
also benefited more from positive parenting 
behaviors). On the other hand, there was no 
consistent evidence to suggest that surgency 
and effortful control moderated the influ -
ence of parenting behaviors on adjustment 
outcomes.
To provide a more concrete example, a 
more recent study illustrates the interactive 
effects of the parenting environment (i.e., 
lack of parental supervision) and adolescent 
trait characteristics (i.e., an aggressive tem -
perament) on changes in conduct disorder 
symptoms over time (Atherton, Schofield, 
Sitka, Conger, & Robins, 2016). Research -
ers have long acknowledged that the auton -
omy afforded by unsupervised self-care may 
be good (i.e., an opportunity for increased 
responsibility, self-  reliance, and indepen -
dence) or bad (i.e., increased delinquency, 
alcohol and tobacco use, and deviant peer 
affiliation; Galambos & Dixon, 1984), de -
pending on how the child perceives, reacts 
to, and evokes responses from the situation. 
Similar to what transpires in Home Alone, 
being left without parental supervision is not 
always detrimental. Atherton et al. (2016) 
found that low parental supervision led to 
increases in conduct disorder symptoms, but 
only when adolescents had more aggressive 
temperamental characteristics.
Within the person–  environment frame -
work, there are three non-  mutually exclu -
sive explanations for a given interaction: 
selection  (i.e., the child selects into particu -
lar environments), evocation  (i.e., the child 
evokes responses or changes in the environ -
ment), and reaction  (i.e., the child reacts to 
different environments). Continuing with 
the previous example of unsupervised self-
care and aggressive temperament, we might 
not expect selection  processes to be impor -tant, because it is typically the parent who 
chooses whether the child spends time in 
unsupervised self-care (i.e., it was Mrs. Mc -
Callister who left Kevin alone at home). 
However, children do have some leeway in 
choosing how, and with whom, they spend 
their time in unsupervised self-care. For ex -
ample, aggressive children might be more 
likely to choose to spend their unsupervised 
time with deviant peers and engage in anti -
social behavior, whereas Kevin is more likely 
to go grocery shopping and maintain good 
personal hygiene. A second explanation in -
volves an evocative  person–  environment 
interaction. According to this second per -
spective, the aggressive child may elicit more 
antisocial behaviors from others in unsuper -
vised time, whereas the nonaggressive child 
(e.g., Kevin) elicits conversations from his 
neighbor about salting the sidewalks. Final -
ly, aggressive youth may react  differently to 
the environmental context of unsupervised 
self-care than less aggressive youth. Kevin 
was more likely to react to this unstructured 
situation in an adaptive way because he was 
a responsible child, whereas youth with ag -
gressive temperaments may interpret the lack 
of adult supervision as conveying the mes -
sage that they can do whatever they want, 
including engagement in antisocial acts.
One final illustration of the person– 
environment framework is how parent and 
offspring personality traits have interactive 
effects on parenting behavior. Using parent- 
reported data, Hong and colleagues (2015) 
found that child temperament moderated 
several of the links between parent personal -
ity traits and parenting behavior. For exam -
ple, mothers’ openness was related to rela -
tive increases in positive support toward the 
child, but only when the child was relatively 
high on effortful control. In contrast, Kar -
reman, van Tuijl, van Aken, and Dekovi ć 
(2008), found that parent personality was 
most predictive of parenting behavior when 
parenting a child with low self-  regulation. 
Clearly, more research is needed in this area.
Developmental Change in the Effect 
of Parenting on  Personality
In recent decades, researchers have direct -
ed attention toward studying changes in 
the parent–  child relationship over the life 
course, and have begun to examine how the 