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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Birth order | 1/3 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birth_order | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T15:31:34.215227+00:00 | kb-cron |
Birth order refers to the order a child is born in their family; firstborn and second-born are examples. Birth order is often believed to have a profound and lasting effect on psychological development. This assertion has been repeatedly challenged. Recent research has consistently found that earlier-born children score slightly higher on average on measures of intelligence, but has found zero, or almost zero, robust effect of birth order on personality. Nevertheless, the notion that birth order significantly influences personality continues to have a strong presence in pop psychology and popular culture.
== Theory == Alfred Adler (1870–1937), an Austrian psychiatrist, and a contemporary of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, was one of the first theorists to suggest that birth order influences personality. He argued that birth order can leave an indelible impression on an individual's style of life, which is one's habitual way of dealing with the tasks of friendship, love, and work. According to Adler, firstborns are "dethroned" when a second child comes along, and this loss of perceived privilege and primacy may have a lasting influence on them. Middle children may feel ignored or overlooked, causing them to develop the so-called middle child syndrome. Younger and only children may be pampered and spoiled, which was suggested to affect their later personalities. All of this assumes what Adler believed to be a typical family situation, e.g., a nuclear family living apart from the extended family, without the children being orphaned, with average spacing between births, without twins and other multiples, and with surviving children not having severe physical, intellectual, or psychiatric disabilities. Since Adler's time, the influence of birth order on the development of personality has become a controversial issue in psychology. Among the general public, it is widely believed that personality is strongly influenced by birth order, but many psychologists dispute this. One modern theory of personality states that the Big Five personality traits of Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism represent most of the important elements of personality that can be measured. Contemporary empirical research shows that birth order does not influence the Big Five personality traits. In his 1996 book Born to Rebel, Frank Sulloway suggested that birth order had powerful effects on the Big Five personality traits. He argued that firstborns were much more conscientious and socially dominant, less agreeable, and less open to new ideas compared to laterborns. However, critics such as Fred Townsend, Toni Falbo, and Judith Rich Harris, argue against Sulloway's theories. A full issue of Politics and the Life Sciences, dated September 2000 but not published until 2004 due to legal threats from Sulloway, contains carefully and rigorously researched criticisms of Sulloway's theories and data. Subsequent large independent multi-cohort studies have revealed approximately zero effect of birth order on personality. In their book Sibling Relationships: Their Nature and Significance across the Lifespan, Michael E. Lamb and Brian Sutton-Smith argue that as individuals continually adjust to competing demands of socialization agents and biological tendencies, any effects of birth order may be eliminated, reinforced, or altered by later experiences.
== Personality ==