Birth Order Affects on Personality

In the texts “That That Elusive Birth Order and What it Means for You,” and “How Birth Order Affects Your Personality,” the authors give their interpretation on the importance of birth order in siblings. The author of the first text, Susan Whitbourne, stresses the unimportance of birth order. Conversely, Joshua Hartshorne, the author of the second text, says that birth order is significant to personality, but there just has not been enough evidence until recent studies.

Among the first psychologists to consider the effect of birth order on personality was Alfred Adler. Adler espoused that birth order was determinative of the amount of attention that children garnered from their parents (Adler, 1964). The first perspective on birth order thus stemmed from a belief that individuals competed for attention and for areas of strength as a response to parental expectations.

Bob likes to be the center of attention. Joe feels that he has authority. Julia tries to outdo everyone and Jimmy just wants to be bigger than the others. What do these all have to do with Birth Order? These all deal with the children’s characteristics depending upon when they were born. Birth Order is the cause of each person’s personality and individual characteristics.

Through different studies like the General Social Survey, it’s clear that birth order does influence personality development and in turn social behavior. This paper explains the factors within the studies and how they proceed to showcase the correlation between birth order and personality development. These results help affirm that a person’s birth order does affect how their personality develops.

Have you wished that you could switch places with your siblings? Whether it is because they are getting more attention from your parents or because they seem to be having more fun, understanding where your place is in the family can reveal a lot about your personality. There are many different factors that impact one’s emotions, outlook, and behavior, but birth order is the most influential. Birth order can impact every facet of our lives, including careers, relationships, and personality. The place that you were born into your family influences the way you interact with other people. But, how can multiple kids from same parents in the same house be so different?

You really do not understand what the birth order actually means, until you really think about from psychology kind of way. That is how this article really is based off of, like how he starts the article. “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

Have you ever thought about if your mom treats you differently than the oldest or the youngest kid? If you are the youngest or the oldest have you ever thought that the middle child was treated better than you just because it's the the middle child like everyone always thinks and everything is just easier for them. Well it just might be true in another way. The birth order does affect things that happen to you. In many ways such as allergies, ADHD, and PTSD. Birth Order of when kids are born can have effects on them for the rest of their lives.

Most of us have heard the long-held theory that the order in which you and your siblings are born has an impact on your personality as an adult. While it may not hold up for every person in the world, studies and research have indicated there is a great deal of truth in that theory. Looking at all the overwhelming evidence, collected by studies and research, one can see that birth order does affect one’s personality. STATE ARTICLES….are three articles that state one’s birth order affects a person’s personality. Overall, one’s birth order does affect the personality due to their parents’ reputations for maintaining discipline on one, the amount of responsibility of a child during their early years, and___________.

This paper presents the study conducted on psychology students to determine if birth order has a direct causal relationship with personality, notably the Big Five personality traits, which include openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. The study focusses mainly on Alder and Sulloway’s theories. The study was coordinated using two separate questionnaires including both a biographical questionnaire and an IPIP-Neo questionnaire. Age, birth order and age were determined by the biographical questionnaire and the personality traits of each tested individual were scored by the IPIP-Neo. The data from the participants varied greatly as was to be expected from such a diverse group. Said group was made up of 69.9% female participants (72) and only 30.1% male participants (31) with ages ranging from 18 to 47. Once all the results were compiled they were sorted into two separate groups of high or low. It was hypothesized that there would not be a direct correlation between birth order and personality. Parts of the results related that there may be a correlation in that some firstborns turned out to be more conscientious, but the majority of the results of these results, once calculated using a

The birth order effect has proved to be a highly debated topic among psychologists and scientists for many years. Magazine pages are flooded with articles about how your birth order can help you pick a spouse or a career. Hundreds of books have been written about the way that birth order affects your personality and intelligence levels. There are many articles written on parenting websites suggesting the best parenting styles to use depending on the birth order of a child. Is the birth order effect a significant factor in who we are or just an elaborate, long-standing hoax? Birth order is the numerical order you are born in relative to your siblings (Moore and Cox, 1990). When a couple has a child, that child will be considered an only child until another child is born. When this second child is born that couple now has a firstborn and a baby of the family. If that couple goes on to have yet another child the first child remains the firstborn, the second child moves to the position of middle child, and the new child is now the baby of the family. The birth order effect emphasizes

From the very moment a person is born, they are subject to judgment. While this unconscious social labeling may seem unwarranted, it still exists and how a person is perceived can be traced to something very specific in many cases. The specific thing is birth order and how it affects one’s awareness of their self and others. Alfred Adler was considered to be the initial researcher of birth order, with theories of how a child’s birth rank affected their development, not only physically but mentally (Franz Description). Birth order within society has a positive effect on personality development, health, and education.

After Frank Sulloway published his popular studies on how birth order affects individuals (1996 & 1999), many researchers delved into the field to determine how personality is affected by birth order. General hypotheses state that most first-born children are more intelligent than those born later, and that the youngest children are more social. Many more similar hypotheses exist in the field, and through several researches, more information on the actual relationship between birth order and personality is available. These researches and experiments give insight into the psychological significance of birth order.

Personality is determined by a number of influences such as genes, environment, social class and family. While all of these factors play significant roles, family tends to be one of the most influential. From an outside perspective, family influences makes members of that household more alike. However, there are many aspects that can differentiate siblings personalities. In the text, factors such as birth order and gender are used to discuss personality differences within families (Cervone, 2014). In a historical context, male siblings often were viewed as more important due to family lineage and inheritance. There is also believed to be a bias in birth order with the eldest holding more significance (Cervone, 2014).

In a society where equality is important, this study can enlighten how learning styles are influenced by birth order. Along with provided research that can help support ways to make success achievable by more. By determining if birth order does have a clear influence of these learning style, we can furthermore learn better ways to work with the later children to enable them the same chances that the first born children tend to have. This will provide evidence to help give children an equal chance at success and prosperity.

The order in which a person is born into their family plays substantial role in the individual’s development of personality. Birth order is believed to influence many aspects of one’s personality. The familial atmosphere is the first group experience a child has and the child’s role in their family influences the development of the child’s individual personality traits. In families, children learn what is valuable and meaningful to their parents and siblings and they compete with their siblings for various roles before they find their personal niche in the family (Stewart et al., 2001). As children are socialized into their families, the children make a place for themselves and no two children make a place for themselves exactly alike. Adler (Weiten, 1998), best known for his theories regarding striving for superiority, was one of the first in the field of psychology to theorize about the differences birth order can make. Adler had a successful older brother, but Adler was weak as a child and thus was most likely affected with the desire to assert himself and prove his worth. Adler’s theory stressed the social aspect of personality development and therefore proposed the possibility of birth order and its significance in the interpersonal relationships of family life. He felt that each position in the order, whether first or last, had distinct characteristics.