Examining the effects of birth order on personality

被引:69
|
作者
Rohrer, Julia M. [1 ]
Egloff, Boris [2 ]
Schmukle, Stefan C. [1 ]
机构
[1] Univ Leipzig, Dept Psychol, D-04109 Leipzig, Germany
[2] Johannes Gutenberg Univ Mainz, Dept Psychol, D-55099 Mainz, Germany
关键词
birth order; personality; Big Five; within-family analyses; siblings; SELF-REPORTS; INTELLIGENCE; ASSOCIATIONS; TRAITS; RANK;
D O I
10.1073/pnas.1506451112
中图分类号
O [数理科学和化学]; P [天文学、地球科学]; Q [生物科学]; N [自然科学总论];
学科分类号
07 ; 0710 ; 09 ;
摘要
This study examined the long-standing question of whether a person's position among siblings has a lasting impact on that person's life course. Empirical research on the relation between birth order and intelligence has convincingly documented that performances on psychometric intelligence tests decline slightly from firstborns to later-borns. By contrast, the search for birth-order effects on personality has not yet resulted in conclusive findings. We used data from three large national panels from the United States (n = 5,240), Great Britain (n = 4,489), and Germany (n = 10,457) to resolve this open research question. This database allowed us to identify even very small effects of birth order on personality with sufficiently high statistical power and to investigate whether effects emerge across different samples. We furthermore used two different analytical strategies by comparing siblings with different birth-order positions (i) within the same family (within-family design) and (ii) between different families (between-family design). In our analyses, we confirmed the expected birth-order effect on intelligence. We also observed a significant decline of a 10th of a SD in self-reported intellect with increasing birth-order position, and this effect persisted after controlling for objectively measured intelligence. Most important, however, we consistently found no birth-order effects on extraversion, emotional stability, agreeableness, conscientiousness, or imagination. On the basis of the high statistical power and the consistent results across samples and analytical designs, we must conclude that birth order does not have a lasting effect on broad personality traits outside of the intellectual domain.
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页码:14224 / 14229
页数:6
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