4 For better, for worse, or both? 135 evidence that the different responsivity patterns coexist. Yet, a “for better and for worse” responsivity pattern was more common than a “for worse” or “for better” pattern. However, no adolescent appeared unsusceptible. Instead, a subgroup appeared not responsive because they did not perceive any changes in parenting, who scored meaningfully lower on trait environmental sensitivity (i.e., sensory processing sensitivity) than all others. Finally, a substantive number of adolescents responded in opposite way from what is expected from universal parenting theories (Rohner et al., 2005; Soenens et al., 2017), whom did not fit in hypothesized responsivity patterns. Effect Heterogeneity: Parenting Effects Differ Between Families At the core of environmental sensitivity models (Greven et al., 2019; Pluess, 2015) is effect heterogeneity (Bolger et al., 2019): individuals do not similarly respond to similar environmental influences. In line with some first empirical studies (Bülow, Van Roekel, et al., 2022; L. H. C. Janssen, Elzinga et al., 2021; Keijsers & Van Roekel, 2018), there was indeed meaningful variation around all average within-family parenting effects, both around significant and nonsignificant average effects. When zooming into the individual effect sizes, effect sizes varied in both size and sign across the adolescents in our study. Parenting effect heterogeneity was replicated with parent-reported parenting and concurrent associations (though heterogeneity was larger in lagged effects). Hence, although the links between the studied parenting dimensions and adolescent outcomes are well established at the group-level (Pinquart, 2017b; Pinquart & Gerke, 2019), effects at the individual level suggest otherwise. How adolescents respond to parenting influences is heterogeneous, just as many other psychological processes across the lifespan (Bolger et al., 2019; Richters, 2021). As such, this study adds to an emerging body of literature that stresses how average effect sizes do not describe each individual and that ignoring heterogeneity may lead to invalid conclusions (Bryan et al., 2021; Fisher et al., 2018; Grice et al., 2020; Hamaker, 2012). For Better, for Worse, for Both, and for Neither: Coexisting Responsivity Patterns In earlier work, the diathesis-stress, vantage sensitivity, and differential susceptibility model have been mostly theorized and tested as competing models (Belsky et al., 2007, 2013; Roisman et al., 2012). Empirical studies have found support for each model, with inconsistencies in findings being related to the studied parenting practice, child outcome, developmental period, and sensitivity marker, for example (Rabinowitz & Drabick, 2017;
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