Track 3

Track 3

The subject of my talk today is the relationship between birth order and personality. By birth order I mean whether an individual is the firstborn child in the family, a middle child, an only child, and so on.

The belief that birth order has a lasting impact on personality is widespread and frequently referred to in popular psychology literature. Alfred Adler, an Austrian psychotherapist, was one of the first to suggest that there was a connection between birth order and personality.

He noticed that firstborn children experienced a loss of status with the birth of siblings. According to Adler, this made eldest children more likely to be anxious than other children. However, on the positive side, they also tend to be conscientious and achievement-oriented, perhaps because they want to regain a position of primacy within the family.

Since Adler, there have been many attempts to establish links between birth order and a range of personality traits. Some studies have found that last-born children tend to be more extrovert and agreeable, that is, they not only seek out the company of others but also tend to get along well with other people.

Middle children, on the other hand, are more likely to be rebellious, perhaps in an attempt to define themselves as special’ in relation to their more conscientious elder siblings and agreeable younger siblings. Some studies, for example, have found that middle children are more likely to choose unconventional careers and hobbies.

However, whilst these views are widely held among the public, scholars have more recently cast doubt on their validity. Many studies have been found to employ a flawed methodology, for instance failing to adequately consider variables such as the family’s socio-economic status.

Large-scale meta-analyses of studies have proved inconclusive with no single trait consistently associated with a given position within the family. Nevertheless, most people are intuitively drawn to the idea that birth order has an effect on the sort of people we become.