Editorial Perspective: Integrating exploratory and competitive-confirmatory approaches to testing person × environment interactions.

Students of child development and of psychopathology have long been interested in how person characteristics (e.g. genotype, temperament) might moderate the effect of environmental exposures (e.g. harsh parenting, negative life events) on development. Historically, most such research on person × environment interaction has been guided by diathesis-stress thinking, which stipulates that some individuals, due to their personal characteristics, are more susceptible to the adverse effects of contextual risk than are others (but do not function differently under supportive or even benign conditions).