Psychology 11: Nature vs. Nurture
Birth
Order
Only Child
First Child
Typical Characteristics
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Pampered and spoiled.
Feels incompetent because adults are more capable.
Is center of attention; often enjoys position. May feel special.
Self-centered.
Relies on service from others rather than own efforts
Feels unfairly treated when doesn't get own way.
May refuse to cooperate.
Plays "divide and conquer" to get own way.
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Is only child for period of time; used to being center
of attention.
Believes must gain and hold superiority over other children.
Being right, controlling often important.
May respond to birth of second child by feeling unloved and neglected.
Strives to keep or regain parents' attention through conformity. If this failed,
chooses to misbehave.
May develop competent, responsible behavior or become very discouraged.
Sometime strives to protect and help others.
Strives to please.
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Second
Child
Middle Child
of Three
Youngest
Child
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Never has parents' undivided attention.
Always has sibling ahead who's more advanced.
Acts as if in race, trying to catch up or overtake first child. If first child is "good,"
second may become "bad." Develops abilities first child doesn't exhibit. If first child
successful, may feel uncertain of self and abilities.
May be rebel.
Often doesn't like position.
Feels "squeezed" if third child is born.
May push down other siblings.
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Has neither rights of oldest nor privileges of youngest.
Feels life is unfair.
Feels unloved, left out, "squeezed."
Feels doesn't have place in family.
Becomes discouraged and "problem child" or elevates self by pushing down other
siblings.
Is adaptable.
Learns to deal with both oldest and youngest sibling.
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Behaves like only child.
Feels every one bigger and more capable.
Expects others to do things, make decisions, take responsibility.
Feels smallest and weakest. May not be taken seriously.
Becomes boss of family in getting service and own way.
Develops feelings of inferiority or becomes "speeder" and overtakes older siblings.
Remains "The Baby." Places others in service.
If youngest of three, often allies with oldest child against middle child.
Psychology 11: Nature vs. Nurture
That Elusive Birth Order Effect and What it Means for You
Can birth order really shape your personality?
Published on May 18, 2013 by Susan Krauss Whitbourne, Ph.D.
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Only child, first-born, last-born, or somewhere in between. Where do you fit into the birth
order of your family? Perhaps you’ve come to believe the myths both in your family and in
psychology as a whole that your character, values, achievement strivings, and life success are
determined by the family position that fate, and your parents, awarded to you. Psychology
goes through periods of alternatively accepting and rejecting these myths. Although various
theories abound, when you come right down to it, the matter is one that requires the right
research approach. Methods are everything in studies of birth order and personality.
Of the many factors to control for, there’s sex of the children, number of years between them
(in multiple-child families), and family history, not to mention the right way to study
personality. What about step-siblings, half-siblings, and siblings who don’t even know that the
other one exists? There are biological and adopted families. Parents vary in their ages and in
the ages they were when they had their children. When it comes to psychological variables,
the situation becomes even more complex. Do we study actual achievements, and if so, how
do we measure them? Income? Education? Occupational prestige or advancement up the
career ladder? Should we look at personality, motivation, intelligence, happiness, or mental
health?
OK, your methodological head is spinning by now, so we’ll try to make some sense of the
latest research, much of which does a better job of controlling for all of these factors than was
true in years past. We’ll look at three recent studies, beginning with a dose of reality from the
distinguished University of Georgia psychologist Alan E. Stewart, who wrote what is perhaps
the definitive recent work (2012) on the theory and research on birth order. He bases his
paper on 529 journal articles published over a 20 year period. The sheer number of studies
on birth order is a testimony to the importance of this topic in psychology.
Study #1 – Alan E. Stewart (2012).
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Taking his lead from the original birth order theorist, Alfred Adler (a one-time disciple of
Freud), Stewart distinguished between “actual” birth order, or ABO (the numerical rank order
into which you are born in your family of origin) and “psychological” birth order, or PBO (selfperceived position in the family). Right away, you’ve probably learned something useful. Your
actual birth order need not have the same impact on you as the birth order you believe
you have. Actual and psychological birth order can deviate for a number of reasons,
including illness of one child, size of family, and degree of separation between siblings. Your
role in the family based on your age may not be same as the role you have come to occupy.
Psychology 11: Nature vs. Nurture
As explained by Stewart, using Adler’s framework, the firstborn child (or one with the “oldest”
role) would be most likely to take on a leadership position, like it when people stick to rules
and order, and strive toward achievement goals. The firstborn may be sensitive to being
“dethroned” by younger sibs who drain away the attention of parents that the firstborn enjoyed
before they came along.
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The youngest child may feel less capable and experienced, and perhaps is a bit pampered by
parents and even older sibs. As a result, the youngest may develop social skills that will get
other people to do things for them, thus contributing to their image as charming and popular.
Then there’s the all-too-easy-to-ignore middle child, who feels robbed of the prized youngest
child status, and perhaps feel rejected. On the positive side, the middle child may also develop
particularly good social skills in order to keep from being ignored.
For the only child, there’s the possible advantage of receiving all the attention from parents,
but this is balanced by the feeling of constantly being scrutinized and controlled.
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These brief portraits probably sound quite familiar to you, and they should, because they
make up much of the stereotyped mythology about birth order. Adler’s description of these
positions are more nuanced than we typically read about in their pop psych translations, but
for now, they’ll suffice.
So, how do you test the effects of birth order? The Psychological Birth Order Inventory (PBOI)
is a comprehensive survey that was developed in 1991 by a research team that included
Stewart. The PBOI contains items to assess all birth order positions in the family that
individuals rate on an agree-disagree scale.
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Firstborn items on the PBOI tap feelings of being powerful, important, leading, and
achieving (“It was important for me to do things right”).
The middle-child items focus on competition, having fewer resources, and feeling
unimportant (“It seemed like I was less important than other members of my family”).
For the youngest child items, individuals rate themselves on being the boss of the
family, getting others to do things for them (“I was pampered by my family members”).
Finally, the only child scale tapped those feelings of pressure (“I felt like I lived in a
fishbowl”).
Taking three examples, rational vs. irrational relationship beliefs, perfectionism, and
personality, in each case, the extent of the relationships with PBO were not overwhelmingly
large, but they were measurable. Your perceived niche in your family plays a larger role in
influencing the adult you’ve become than the actual timing of your birth.
Psychology 11: Nature vs. Nurture
Stewart’s study shows that we’re not fated to live out a life dominated by the accident of the
timing of our birth. You can’t change your actual birth order, but you can change the way you
think about your role in the family. Sounds like pretty good news, especially if you felt doomed
to a life of middle-child insignificance.
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Study #2 – Daniel Eckstein, Jason Kaufman (2012).
Now we’ll take a look at the second contribution, a paper by Daniel Eckstein of Saba
University in Netherlands Antilles written with co-author Jason Kaufman (2012). Examining
several areas of family life and sibling relationships, Eckstein and Kaufman tested, among
other areas, what’s known as the “Confluence model” developed by Zajonc (1976).
According to this view, first-borns are the teachers, and later-borns are the learners.
However, as Eckstein and Kaufman point out, first-borns aren’t necessarily the only ones
doing the teaching between sibs. If we use the assumption that perceptions count more than
reality, it then becomes clear that second-borns can have much to teach their older sibs. The
way they approach the task may be different, but the direction isn’t just one-way, as we might
otherwise assume. We'll finish up with the Eckstein and Kaufman paper shortly.
Study #3 – Bernd Carette (2011).
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The third study bears directly on the point of leadership within the two-child home. Ghent
University psychologist Bernd Carette and colleagues (2011) compared the ways that firstand second-borns set goals for themselves. Carette and his fellow researchers limited their
study to sibs who were closely spaced in age (averaging 2.5 years). When birth order effects
are found, they point out, they tend to be present in this narrow span of time. The
theory behind this study was that firstborns would set “self-referenced” goals (goals that they
choose for themselves) and second-borns would set “other-referenced” goals or performance
goals (wanting to do well on goals set by others).
Firstborns, they argue, would strive for mastery, but second borns would want to do well to
hit the targets that someone else set for them, i.e. the older sib. The measure they used
tapped mastery goals by asking participants to indicate, for example, whether in their courses
they tried to understand the material as much as possible. Questions about performance
goals asked whether they wanted to do well compared to other people.
The findings Carette and team report lend statistically significant data. They concluded that
the findings “show that birth order lies at the heart of people’s goal preferences”. Pretty strong
stuff. In other words, If you’re convinced that your birth order leads you to be a leader, you’ll
behave like a leader.
Let’s return to Study #2, but let’s flip it and see the role of parental perceptions of their
children’s birth order. Eckstein and Kaufman point out that perceptions and beliefs about birth
order may have their effects, in large part, because parents impose their own stereotypes onto
their children. By assigning these stereotyped birth-order roles, which may interact with
Psychology 11: Nature vs. Nurture
gender roles, parents create self-fulfilling prophecies among their brood. You come to feel like
the leader, if you’re a first-born, because you were handed this role early in your life.
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Perceptions about birth order can also influence your choice of a future career. Eckstein and
Kaufman cite a study conducted in Poland showing that people believe first-borns to be more
likely to occupy high prestige occupations to the tune of a correlation of .76 (out of a possible
1.0). That’s an almost unheard-of statistic in psychology, where the average reported in a
published article is about .3 or .4 at most.
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With regard to intelligence, which you have undoubtedly also heard is related to birth order,
the data remain unconvincing. Plus, you must consider the well-documented fact that people
perform on intelligence tests in ways that are subtly influenced by their self-perceptions, the
birth order research becomes even more inherently flawed. If you go around life believing that
because you’re a firstborn you’re inevitably smarter, you’ll approach any testing situations with
the kind of self-confidence boost that can actually boost your score.
This is just one example of the impact that perceptions and stereotypes about birth order can
have on apparent birth order effects. The moral of the story for parents is to look for your
own biases and stereotypes about birth order as you think about what your children are
capable of doing. Encourage them to teach each other, to define their own identities in the
family, and to avoid labeling themselves based on their birth order. Don’t let the lives of your
children be dominated by the random forces that caused them to be born when they were.
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Once we define ourselves in terms of who we are, and not when we were born, we’ll be able to
open up many more opportunities for fulfillment than even our parents might have dreamed for
us.
Copyright Susan Krauss Whitbourne, Ph.D. 2013
References:
Carette, B., Anseel, F., & Van Yperen, N. W. (2011). Born to learn or born to win? Birth order effects on
achievement goals. Journal of Research In Personality, 45(5), 500-503. doi:10.1016/j.jrp.2011.06.008
Eckstein, D., & Kaufman, J. A. (2012). The role of birth order in personality: An enduring intellectual legacy of
Alfred Adler. The Journal of Individual Psychology, 68(1), 60-61.
Stewart, Alan E., (2012). Issues in birth order research methodology: Perspectives form individual psychology.
The Journal of Individual Psychology, 68(1), 75-106.
Zajonc, R. B. (1976). Family configuration and intelligence. Science, 192, 227–236.
Psychology 11: Nature vs. Nurture
In your Response Journal:
1. What is your ABO (actual birth order)? Do you feel it is the same as your PBO? (lines 3242) Does the spacing between you and your siblings, (lines 108-110) affect this? Are there
other factors (blended family etc.) to consider?
2. Do you feel that, based on your birth order, you conform to or diverge from the typical
characteristics in the chart? Which characteristics do you possess, and which are you
different from?
3. If you have other siblings, do you feel that they conform to birth order typecasts?
4. What role might your parents have had in affecting your perception of your birth order?
(lines 144-150)
5. What does this article tell you about the effect that your birth order might have in your
life? How can you overcome this effect?