The Best, The Unhealthy Along with SKAP1

However, this speculation warrants further examination. In accordance with the differential susceptibility theories (Belsky et al., 2007), we found a link between exposure to high levels of RD and depressive symptoms among youth who carried the one of two copies of the s allele of the 5-HTTLPR. This finding is consistent with neuroimaging studies and prior G �� E research involving the 5-HTTLPR such that female youth who carry the short allele, because of their genetic make-up, may be more reactive to emotional or threating social cues in their environments (e.g., being disrespectfully treated by community members) and are therefore more negatively impacted by experiences of RD than those with the ll genotype. The finding that carrying two copies of the long allele may confer protection from depressive symptoms when they experience high levels of discrimination is relevant to research on youth resilience. The resilience literature has addressed potential reasons why some youth who experience adverse experiences, including exposures to chronic stressors, do not succumb to their negative SKAP1 effects (Luthar, 2006). The present results support recent findings suggesting that genetic status may also contribute to resilience (Rutter and Silberg, 2002; Moffitt et al., 2006; Kim-Cohen and Gold, 2009; Brody et al., 2011). Particularly, the finding that carrying two l alleles attenuates the association between discrimination and depressive symptoms suggests a possible emotional self-regulatory mechanism by which genotype contributes to the down regulation of emotions resulting from discriminatory experiences (Simons et al., 2003, 2006; Brody et al., 2011), but this potential mechanistic pathway requires further investigation. Further, the potentially protective effects of the ll allele may not be generalizable to all youth, or under all contexts. Similar to Estrada-Marinez et al.��s (2012) findings that not all stressors are equally impactful on externalizing and internalizing outcomes, our results also suggest that young women with the ll allele may be resilient in some areas but experience distress in others, such as when they experience certain aspects of interpersonal relationships that may not be perceived as threatening yet cause stress. Our findings also are in line with Belsky et al.