Birth Order: Its Influence on Personality

357 Pages·1985·14.31 MB·English

by  Dr. Cécile Ernst

Cecile Ernst . Jules Angst
BIRTH ORDER
Its Influence on Personality
Foreword by M. Bleuler
With 86 Tables and 4 Figures
Springer-Verlag
Berlin Heidelberg New York 1983
Dr. CECILE ERNST
Psychiatrische UniversiUitsklinik
Postfach 68
CH-8029 Zurich 8
Prof. Dr. JULES ANGST
Psychiatrische U niversitatsklmik
Forschungsdirektion
Postfach 68
CH-8029 Zurich 8
ISBN-13: 978-3-642-68401-2 e-ISBN-13: 978-3-642-68399-2
DOl: 10.1007/978-3-642-68399-2
LIbrary of Congress Catalogmg m PublIcatIOn Data Ernst, CecIle BIrth order BIblIography
p Includes mdex I BIrth order-PsychologIcal aspects I Angst, Jules II TItle BF723 B5E76
1983 1559'3 82-19295
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2125/3130-543210
To our children:
Marianne (1), Andreas (2), Rudo/f(3) and
Katharina (4) Ernst
and
Katrin (1) and
Felix (2) Angst,
whose personalities still puzzle their parents
Foreword
This study appears at a time when a decisive turn is due in the
research on personality development. After many years of stagna
tion and misguided research in this field, this book should lead to a
thorough revision and a better understanding of current views on
the factors which have an influence on personality.
Let us consider the unsatisfactory aspects of the recent develop
ments in personality studies.
At the beginning of this century, the revolutionary insight
gained ground that personality is susceptible to various influences,
in particular to those resulting from human interaction. This insight
swept away many of the old scholastic concepts and gained special
importance in the fields of pedagogics and psychotherapy. How
ever, in the wake of every great discovery we find inherent dangers.
For years, various claims and creeds on the malleability of
personality have been put forward as if they were proven facts.
Lay literature, too, was permeated with wrong and distorted
information on factors which might endanger child development.
In order to shed light on this unsatisfactory state of affairs, the
authors have chosen an impressive example: they investigated the
claim that a child's birth rank position should have a decisive
and systematic influence on his or her future. They show that the
pertinent hypotheses require much more carefully conducted re
search than that contained in most pUblications of the past. Many
parents will be relieved from worries about a child's future just
because he or she is the first- or lastborn, or an only child.
However, the authors do not restrict themselves to opposing
mistaken tendencies. They go one step further to uncover what an
enormous amount of careful and painstaking work is needed to
perceive the relationship between environmental influences and
personality development. It is such a large and important task it will
require extraordinary dedication, as was the case with the present
study.
The future consequences are clearly outlined: research on
personality development is certainly rewarding as long as we refrain
from premature conclusions based on mere assumptions and
statistics. However, valuable results have been achieved in this field,
even at the present stage; the authors confirm again that a broken or
VIII Foreword
disrupted home seriously endangers a child's future. Beyond this,
however, we can perceive a basic principle: no single environmental
influence is decisive. The significance of an isolated factor is
invariably co-determined by all the other biographical factors and
by constitutional predisposition.
The overall result of all this is obvious and simple: however
seriously we consider the statistically proved dangers to personal
development, the principal task of the investigator still consists
in taking into account the individual human being in his or her
uniqueness and specific environment. Statistics are not enough to
do justice to this aspiration; a feeling heart and critical thought are
just as important.
The following significant principle can be derived from this
book: science has a justified place in human interaction but it cannot
replace our natural humaneness. In this sense the authors' message
is truly humanistic.
Zollikon (Switzerland) 11ANFRED BLEULER
Preface
In part I of this book we have tried to give as complete a survey
as possible of studies on the relationship between birth order and
socialization, intellectual functioning, and various aspects of
personality. The studies considered appeared between 1946 and
1980.
This survey is imperfect for many reasons, some related to the
limitations of the author, others to difficulties inherent in the
subject. We will start by enumerating the author's failings.
1. Because of the time lag between publication and the appear
ance of abstracts in scientific periodicals, some recent studies could
not be included.
2. The research has not been evaluated for its statistical merits
or drawbacks, since a thorough study of statistical methods would
have overtaxed our time and capabilities. We have limited ourselves
to the much decried "hunt for significance," so nonsignificant
trends have not been considered.
3. We have not systematically reported differences in person
ality or intellectual endowment related to sex of sib, and those that
are reported give an incoherent picture.
4. After· some attempts, we gave up looking for validity and
reliability coefficients of the tests used in the studies. Often
they were not reported by the authors, and trying to find data
in the pertinent reference works would have protracted our efforts
greatly.
5. The studies are grouped first according to areas of behavior,
then according to constructs, and then according .to the methods
used. We do not define these constructs and most birth order
researchers also fail to do so: they are nothing more than vague
common denominators.
6. The categorization of a given study under a certain construct
is to some degree arbitrary. We have followed the authors'
intentions whenever they were reported. Other ways of ordering the
studies might lead to different results: The differential interest in
task and person found in first- and laterboms, for example, has
been listed under the heading "Interest and Values," where the
majority of data fail to point out birth order differences. It might as
x Preface
well have been included under "Extra-and Intraversion" to support
the opinion of parents that firstborns are more introverted.
7. Studies of a very large qualitative range have been included.
Thus it was possible to demonstrate that the frequency of birth
order results is negatively correlated to the quality of the studies. On
the other hand, the enumeration of unsophisticated research makes
tedious reading.
8. Studies in which birth order differences were discovered
accidentally have been included. Since they would not have been
published if the results had been negative, they bias the survey to
some extent. While collecting material for a survey on IQ research
we were impressed by the persistent accidental findings of sex
differences. Findings that occur repeatedly without being expected
are particularly valuable evidence. There are, however, no such
trends in accidental birth order results.
9. The evaluation of results is open to criticism as well. We have
tried to follow a pattern where studies controlling for social
variables or using well-matched controls were given more weight
than those using unsophisticated methods, and research on sibs
within the same family was considered more extensively than either.
Since, however, the latter type of research is missing in many areas
of behavior, this procedure has not always been possible.
Other survey writers who evaluate statistical methods, observe
trends and interactions, differentiate by sex of sib, and use different
evaluation criteria may arrive at different results, particularly in the
areas where sib studies are missing. Still. we are convinced that even
a survey conducted with better methods will reveal that birth order
explains only an extremely small part of variance in the pertinent
variables.
So much for the author's limitations. However, there are flaws
and grave imperfections in birth order research itself that become
apparent when we list the hypotheses examined here:
1. IQ is negatively correlated to birth order in that it is higher in
firstborns than in laterborns.
2. School achievement is negatively correlated to birth order in
that it is higher in firstborns than in laterborns.
3. Occupational status is negatively correlated to birth order in
that it is higher in firstborns than in laterborns.
4. Personality varies with birth order: There is a "firstborn
personality."
5. Risk of mental illness varies with birth order.
The vagueness of these hypotheses is not accidental. Everybody
agrees that birth order differences must arise from differential
socialization by the parents. There is, however, no general theory
on how this differential socialization actually works, and how it
is related to differentials in IQ, achievement, and personality
(Peuckert 1974). Chapter 7 will show the extreme arbitrariness and
Preface XI
loose reasoning with which the post hoc theories on socialization
and personality are related to differences in variables of birth order
that were found with questionable methods. As we will see, Adler is
no exception.
Birth order research seems very simple, since position in a
sibship and sibship size are easily defined. The computer is fed some
ordinal numbers, and it is then easy to find a plausible post hoc
explanation for any significant difference in the related variables. If,
for example, lastborn children report more anxiety than other birth
ranks, it is because for many years they were the weakest in the
family. If firstborns are found to be the most timid, it is because of
incoherent treatment by an inexperienced mother. If, on the other
hand, middle children show the greatest anxiety, it is because they
have been neglected by their parents, being neither the first- nor
the lastborn. With some imagination it is even possible to find
explanations for greatest anxiety in a second girl of four, and so
on, ad infinitum.
This kind of research is a sheer waste of time and money. If birth
order research is to be continued, coherent theories must be
formulated and explicit hypotheses derived. The hypotheses must
be tested, taking into account the methodological fallacies that will
be described in Chap. 1. We have tried to do this in part II. Most of
the hypotheses we examined have been refuted.
Our book aims to put an end to the above-described inadequate
kind of research. Perhaps some researchers will take up birth order
differences in intellectual development and/or personality afresh;
but it may be that having read this survey they will refrain from
doing so under the impression that, even with unobjectionable
methods, only very modest results can be expected.
Zurich, CEcILE ERNST
Psychiatrische U niversitatsklinik JULES ANGST
Burgh61z1i
Postscript. The excellent meta-analytic method with which Smith et
al. (1981) * conducted their survey only came to our notice when this
manuscript was finished. Had we been able to use this method our
own survey would have stood on a much firmer footing.
* Smith, ML, Glass CV, Miller TI (1981) The benefits of psychotherapy. Johns
Hopkms UniverSity Press
Acknowledgments
We wish to thank everyone who helped and counselled us during
the long and laborious task of writing this book: First of all
we would like to honor the memory of the late Miss Thilde
Dinkelkamp, research assistant, who was taken from her work
by a sudden and untimely death. Mrs. Anja Dobler-Mikola,
sociologist, did the computational work of Part II. Mr. J. Binder,
sociologist, and Mr. A. Dittrich, PhD, Mr. M. Sieber, PhD,
and Mr. N. v. Luckner, all psychologists, were extremely patient
advisers on the problems arising in Part I. Mrs. Hilde Bendel,
Mrs. Anja Gubser, Mrs. Francine Lombard, Mrs. Ursula Moser,
and Mrs. Martha Sennhauser wrote and rewrote the manuscript
with unremitting conscientiousness.
We would further like to thank the editors of the series
"Monographien aus dem Gesamtgebiete der Psychiatrie - Psychiatry
Series," Professor H. Hippius, Professor W. J anzarik, and Professor
C. Miiller, for their advice and support.
Last but not least we would like to express our gratitude to our
mentor, Professor Manfred Bleuler, Ziirich, who taught us to look
for the factual basis of even the most popular psychological and
psychiatric theories.