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Is birth order important? · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of My
0:03
Speaker 1: Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
0:12
Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles Duby, Choke Bryant, there's Jerry
0:15
Speaker 1: over there, and this is Stuff You Should Know jerodcast. Jerry.
0:21
Speaker 1: Were you a what was your birth order? Oh, Jerry's
0:27
Speaker 1: a middle child, two of two or two of more.
0:31
Speaker 1: So you're the baby. You don't know this, did you? Sure? No?
0:36
Speaker 1: I know Jerry for like thirteen years, so have I? Well,
0:39
Speaker 1: not that long twelve years, So have I no comment?
0:45
Speaker 1: What am I? I don't know? That's right, I know what.
0:49
Speaker 1: I'm the baby? You know that. Yeah, I didn't ask
0:52
Speaker 1: what you were. I know you know what you are?
0:53
Speaker 1: What am I? This isn't quits not You're not gonna
0:56
Speaker 1: just yea. Yeah, I wasn't calling you out. I was
1:01
Speaker 1: calling you out in a humorous way. And I called
1:03
Speaker 1: you out. Um. It's hard not to look at this
1:06
Speaker 1: stuff through your own lens though, of your own family.
1:09
Speaker 1: You know, are you changing the subject? I don't know.
1:12
Speaker 1: I'm getting on with it because as the youngest of three,
1:17
Speaker 1: and all of us have three distinct personalities, it's hard
1:19
Speaker 1: not to kind of like think about birth order and
1:22
Speaker 1: if that's a thing, and it may be and it
1:24
Speaker 1: may not be. Yeah, depends on which scientists you're asking.
1:29
Speaker 1: I tend to think like, there's just no way it
1:33
Speaker 1: doesn't have any effect. Now there, I think it definitely
1:36
Speaker 1: has an effect. But as we will see, it is
1:40
Speaker 1: one part of a huge pie that uh that indicates
1:46
Speaker 1: what kind of person and personality you might have. Well.
1:49
Speaker 1: Plus also it's devilishly tricky to to analyze, to study
1:54
Speaker 1: because of how big that pie is. Yeah, there's so
1:57
Speaker 1: much going on with your personality that to just pinpoint
2:01
Speaker 1: one thing, even a big thing like that where you're
2:04
Speaker 1: born in a family, um, it's just tough to pin down.
2:08
Speaker 1: So you're the youngest, right, good yess? Yes I am.
2:13
Speaker 1: I knew you were the youngest. I'm like, I wear
2:16
Speaker 1: that on my sleeve. I feel like I kind of
2:19
Speaker 1: do too a lot, I guess in some ways. But
2:23
Speaker 1: like I was reading this checklist for the youngest, Yeah,
2:26
Speaker 1: I'm like, yeah, I guess. So let's let's let's do
2:29
Speaker 1: should we go over that that stuff first? Yeah? Totally
2:32
Speaker 1: all right. So this is like the sort of macro
2:35
Speaker 1: view of how a lot of people think of birth
2:39
Speaker 1: order pop psychology. Yeah, so if you were born into
2:45
Speaker 1: a family, there's basically four ways that you can be
2:48
Speaker 1: born in some sort of order. You can be the firstborn,
2:52
Speaker 1: you can be a middle child, or you can be
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Speaker 1: the last born. And then if you're real out fire. Okay,
3:01
Speaker 1: you're right, So there's five oh god, don't even get
3:04
Speaker 1: me started. Um, okay, a multi um or you can
3:10
Speaker 1: be an only child too, and all of them have
3:13
Speaker 1: distinct personalities. Again according to pop psychology, but also according
3:17
Speaker 1: to every person who's ever been born into a family,
3:20
Speaker 1: especially and so with the first born um, the whole
3:24
Speaker 1: the whole theory of basically birth order, where where you're
3:27
Speaker 1: born into the family unit that you're born into, and
3:30
Speaker 1: what effect that has on your personality and how it develops.
3:34
Speaker 1: It all seems to come down to this idea that
3:37
Speaker 1: you are born into a family where there is a
3:41
Speaker 1: finite resource called parental attention, and then that is a
3:45
Speaker 1: pie that gets increasingly divided up into smaller and smaller
3:49
Speaker 1: pieces the more and more children that are born, because
3:52
Speaker 1: your parents can't possibly give five kids the same amount
3:56
Speaker 1: of attention that they could give an only child. It's
3:59
Speaker 1: just not possible. And so what dynamics are created in
4:02
Speaker 1: the personality of the kids born into that family depending
4:06
Speaker 1: on how many others are born and depending on where
4:08
Speaker 1: they fall in that birth order. That's kind of the
4:11
Speaker 1: premise of the whole thing. And over time people have said, well,
4:14
Speaker 1: this is what the first point is like, this is
4:16
Speaker 1: what the middle is like, this is what the baby's like. Yeah,
4:18
Speaker 1: and there were I mean a lot of this are
4:20
Speaker 1: these are generalizations, but they are generalizations. Like you said
4:24
Speaker 1: that kind of everyone who's ever been in a family
4:26
Speaker 1: can kind of say, yeah, that's kind of true. Um,
4:30
Speaker 1: you know when you have an only or your first kid,
4:33
Speaker 1: they this article references as that first sort of experiment.
4:38
Speaker 1: You don't know what you're doing yet. Um, you're probably
4:41
Speaker 1: going all in, depending on how lazy you are, how
4:43
Speaker 1: motivated you are as a parent with this, you know,
4:47
Speaker 1: being a super parent. And then if supposedly as you
4:51
Speaker 1: have more children you get it's not only is your
4:54
Speaker 1: is your attention divided? I think, but there's the notion
4:57
Speaker 1: that you also are like, you know what, a probably
5:00
Speaker 1: don't need to be as crazy with number two and
5:03
Speaker 1: number three, Um, leave them to their own devices. As
5:07
Speaker 1: a third kid, I'm not going to get into too
5:09
Speaker 1: many depressing details of my family growing up, but like
5:14
Speaker 1: by the time I was ten and eleven and my
5:18
Speaker 1: parents had other things going on, and I wasn't fair
5:23
Speaker 1: old kids on the side. Not exactly, Um, I wasn't
5:28
Speaker 1: fair old by any means, but I was. I did
5:31
Speaker 1: not have rules imposed on me like my brother and
5:33
Speaker 1: sister did. I did not have I was allowed to
5:36
Speaker 1: go to Panama City for spring break and they weren't.
5:39
Speaker 1: I was allowed to kind of do my own thing,
5:42
Speaker 1: and I was trustworthy, So that probably had a lot
5:44
Speaker 1: to do with it. If I would have been a
5:46
Speaker 1: real problem, they might have clamped down a little more,
5:48
Speaker 1: or maybe not. And they probably wouldn't have necessarily clamped down,
5:51
Speaker 1: like we need to give Chuck Way more attention and
5:53
Speaker 1: guidance than we have been. They would have probably been
5:56
Speaker 1: like crime and punishment. They would have been, like we're saying,
5:58
Speaker 1: in Chuck the rehab or whatever her you know what
6:00
Speaker 1: I mean, Let rehab take care of our reform school
6:02
Speaker 1: or something like that, because once you get X number
6:05
Speaker 1: of kids in, you're just so tired, so tired, and
6:09
Speaker 1: you're older too, Like when you're chasing a little kid
6:13
Speaker 1: around and like your forties or fifties. That's different than
6:17
Speaker 1: when you're chasing a little kid around in your mid twenties.
6:19
Speaker 1: I can't imagine a world of difference, you know. Um,
6:23
Speaker 1: So there's there's there. There's a lot of resources, not
6:26
Speaker 1: just you know, parents attention, but also their time, intellectual
6:30
Speaker 1: attention that they'll give a kid like and say, um,
6:34
Speaker 1: like hanging out, teaching the kid to read that kind
6:36
Speaker 1: of stuff. Um, and just attention in general, and also
6:39
Speaker 1: financial resources the families. Resources in general are a pie
6:44
Speaker 1: that must be divided among all financial, emotional, all that
6:47
Speaker 1: stuff instructive. Uh. So, generally speaking, firstborn's, people say, tend
6:53
Speaker 1: to be very conscientious and structured and reliable. Uh and
6:58
Speaker 1: high achieve high achiever. Yeah, because their parents are focusing
7:04
Speaker 1: like a laser on them. They know everything that kids
7:07
Speaker 1: got going on, maybe a little too much. Um. And
7:11
Speaker 1: the kid is responding to this by basically becoming a
7:13
Speaker 1: perfectionist and really wanting to be around their parents. Um
7:19
Speaker 1: and and um. Their parents friends sure very much mature
7:23
Speaker 1: because they're all of the people are most of the
7:25
Speaker 1: people are hanging out with our adults. Okay, so that's
7:29
Speaker 1: the firstborn typically, right, everybody knows it. Don't try to
7:33
Speaker 1: deny middles in general are people pleasing? Which is so
7:39
Speaker 1: my brother. Um, that's weird to me because when I
7:42
Speaker 1: think of middle children, I think of jam Brady, and
7:44
Speaker 1: jam Brady was not a people pleaser. She was just
7:47
Speaker 1: you know, a lump, like a lump with a cloud overhead,
7:51
Speaker 1: poor Jan. But that's true, Like I would not characterize
7:55
Speaker 1: Jan Brady as a people pleaser, would you know? Like
7:58
Speaker 1: she was gonna burn some thing down and eventually if
8:01
Speaker 1: the Brady bunchet stayed on the air long enough. Was
8:03
Speaker 1: also a blended family. So what was who was the
8:06
Speaker 1: It was Bobby and then Peter later, I guess you'd
8:10
Speaker 1: call it was he was he a people pleaser or
8:14
Speaker 1: just a Peter Jan more than Jan. But blended families
8:20
Speaker 1: do confound things. We'll get into that for sure. Um.
8:22
Speaker 1: But people pleasing, Uh, somewhat rebellious, which is not my
8:26
Speaker 1: brother at all. Um, large social circle, not really my
8:29
Speaker 1: brother and a peacemaker, totally my brother. He's the best,
8:33
Speaker 1: He's the best. Uh. And then the young things, younges,
8:37
Speaker 1: young uns like us, Um, most free spirited, fun loving, uncomplicated, manipulative.
8:47
Speaker 1: I've I've been called some of these things varying degrees,
8:51
Speaker 1: self centered, attention seeking and outgoing check and check. But
8:56
Speaker 1: on combined you and I and we're sort of like
8:58
Speaker 1: the proto youngest complicated. Though I'm like, I don't get that.
9:02
Speaker 1: I'm I'm I'm exquisitely complicated on the surface. You wouldn't
9:06
Speaker 1: think it, but I'm pretty complicated as we all know
9:09
Speaker 1: in this room. But that's the only one that I'm
9:11
Speaker 1: like that I question. Yeah. All the rest of them
9:15
Speaker 1: are like, yeah, that makes sense. Looks like the Chinese zodiac.
9:18
Speaker 1: You look at that menu and you're like, um, total
9:20
Speaker 1: dog yes, and movie guy pants sounds great right now.
9:25
Speaker 1: Only these no siblings. You are what they call almost
9:30
Speaker 1: like a super firstborn. All of the traits of the
9:34
Speaker 1: firstborn on steroids, very much perfectionists, very much more mature
9:40
Speaker 1: for your age, conscientious, diligent, prone to be leader, can
9:45
Speaker 1: leap over tall buildings. Uh. And then this is where
9:49
Speaker 1: it gets interesting, and this sort of starts to finally, everybody,
9:52
Speaker 1: this is where it starts to get interested. Well, this
9:54
Speaker 1: is where it gets in a little bit like how
9:56
Speaker 1: complicated it can get because there's so many factors that
10:00
Speaker 1: play like Um, what if you're in a blended family,
10:04
Speaker 1: because that kind of throws it all out of whack. Yeah,
10:08
Speaker 1: if you're born a firstborn and you your parents your
10:13
Speaker 1: your parents get divorce and your you go with your
10:15
Speaker 1: mom who gets remarried to a dude who has yes
10:19
Speaker 1: to a smashing cool architect for sure. Um, and he
10:23
Speaker 1: has a kid that's a little older than you. Greg's
10:27
Speaker 1: the firstborn. You're not the firstborn anymore. The best you
10:31
Speaker 1: can hope for is to form some sort of confederacy
10:33
Speaker 1: or alliance with Greg to rule the rest of the siblings.
10:36
Speaker 1: But you're not the head Hans show anymore. You're not
10:38
Speaker 1: in charge. That's a big deal. I can't imagine many
10:42
Speaker 1: more traumatic experiences, especially when that follows closely on the
10:45
Speaker 1: heels of your parents divorced or the death of like
10:48
Speaker 1: your other parents. Um, that's got to be one of
10:51
Speaker 1: the most traumatic things that kid can go through is
10:53
Speaker 1: to lose the they're identified perch in the family order. Yeah,
10:59
Speaker 1: and that's you were we were talking about, like the firstborn,
11:01
Speaker 1: like the baby of the family. If all of a
11:03
Speaker 1: sudden there's a younger, no good like I remember my
11:07
Speaker 1: parents for some reason talking about adopting a kid. I
11:12
Speaker 1: can't remember how old I was. I must have been
11:14
Speaker 1: about seven, and I remember breaking down and crying and
11:18
Speaker 1: just being like, you can't do this. You cannot bring
11:22
Speaker 1: in someone younger and cuter than me, And that happens.
11:27
Speaker 1: I'm seven, blended family, all of a sudden, you'd be
11:30
Speaker 1: a younger or God forbid of baby. Just forget about it.
11:34
Speaker 1: Can't compete with that. You gotta kill that baby. Well,
11:39
Speaker 1: that's what happened to when Brady Bunch started to lose ratings.
11:42
Speaker 1: Apparently your family was losing ratings. They brought in cousin Oliver,
11:46
Speaker 1: a new baby, and I don't think Bobby was very
11:48
Speaker 1: happy about that either. No, but just think about Janet
11:51
Speaker 1: all makes a little bit more sense. Like she was like,
11:54
Speaker 1: I'm the middle child, and then they brought in three
11:56
Speaker 1: more and she was like, I'm even more middle Yeah,
11:58
Speaker 1: you're deluded. The middle child is deluded. And if you
12:01
Speaker 1: have multiple middle children, forget about it. That's right. However,
12:05
Speaker 1: here's the thing with blended families. They say by about
12:07
Speaker 1: the age of five that a lot of your personality
12:10
Speaker 1: is set. So if you're older than five and all
12:13
Speaker 1: of a sudden, your family is blended. They say, it
12:16
Speaker 1: may not make that much of a difference. No, No No,
12:19
Speaker 1: that's where it's trouble. If you're younger than five and
12:22
Speaker 1: your your personality a little more plastic. If you were
12:25
Speaker 1: born a baby of the family and suddenly you're a firstborn,
12:29
Speaker 1: or you're not the or you're a middle kid, you'll
12:32
Speaker 1: adapt to that a lot better than you would if
12:34
Speaker 1: you're like older and you're you're more solid in your
12:36
Speaker 1: birth order. Yeah, I didn't mean not trouble. What I
12:40
Speaker 1: meant was like, if you're uh like twelve years old
12:44
Speaker 1: and the family blending happens, it's trouble, But it's it's
12:48
Speaker 1: not like your personality is like, all of a sudden,
12:51
Speaker 1: I'm the the youngest or you know what I mean. Like,
12:55
Speaker 1: you don't all of a sudden swap to a different
12:58
Speaker 1: birth order personality, I don't think, right. But if you're
13:00
Speaker 1: younger and it happens, you do right under the age
13:04
Speaker 1: of five, which goes to show that if this is
13:06
Speaker 1: the thing, and we'll talk about whether it is or
13:08
Speaker 1: not soon. Um, it has nothing to do with biology,
13:12
Speaker 1: has everything to do with with nurture, not nature, because
13:16
Speaker 1: a kid can adapt depending on When this happens, they
13:19
Speaker 1: can adapt to a change in birth order if they're
13:22
Speaker 1: young enough. That means it has nothing to do with biology.
13:25
Speaker 1: It's all the environment you're raised in, which is the
13:29
Speaker 1: most bone headedly obvious thing on the planet. And then
13:33
Speaker 1: before we take a break, they are also gap children.
13:36
Speaker 1: Um supposedly, if there's at least a five year gap
13:38
Speaker 1: between births, then it just sort of resets. That was
13:41
Speaker 1: like me and my oldest sister. She was thirteen years
13:43
Speaker 1: older than me. She was just like this older, cool person,
13:48
Speaker 1: but not like an old older sister, not at all
13:51
Speaker 1: overbearing for me. I guess a little bit or like
13:55
Speaker 1: a second mom kind of to an extent, because that
13:59
Speaker 1: does happen to if there's a big gap or a
14:01
Speaker 1: big family. Like I dated a girl in New Jersey
14:04
Speaker 1: that had there was like six or seven of them,
14:07
Speaker 1: and the by the time she came around, she was
14:10
Speaker 1: kind of fully being raised by her siblings, right, So,
14:14
Speaker 1: so what happens when there's enough of a gap a
14:16
Speaker 1: new family birth order forms. So like if you have
14:19
Speaker 1: an oldest and then there's multiple years, like say ten
14:23
Speaker 1: years between your oldest and your middle and then two
14:26
Speaker 1: years between your middle and your baby. The middle and
14:29
Speaker 1: the baby are going to form a firstborn and a
14:32
Speaker 1: last born type relationship. Yeah, the last born is always
14:36
Speaker 1: going to be the last born, yes, regardless of gap.
14:39
Speaker 1: But then twins, like you were saying, is one last
14:42
Speaker 1: confounding thing. The twins or triplets multiples as you call them. Um, yeah,
14:49
Speaker 1: I think so. Uh. They form their own family unit
14:52
Speaker 1: within the family too, with each other. And apparently no
14:56
Speaker 1: matter where they're born, twins never act like middle kids.
15:00
Speaker 1: They always act like the firstborn or the baby, but
15:02
Speaker 1: to one another. Right, and I think they generally come
15:06
Speaker 1: together to kill the parents basically, right, they hold hands,
15:09
Speaker 1: it's like an elevator of blood washes around them. Uh.
15:12
Speaker 1: And then finally with adoption, Um, they say that depending
15:17
Speaker 1: on when your child is adopted, the same kind of
15:20
Speaker 1: scenario scenario happens as in like with gapped and blended families. Whereas,
15:25
Speaker 1: if the kids young enough here so you will tailor
15:29
Speaker 1: there um, their their birth order to the family that
15:32
Speaker 1: they're adopted into. But if they're older, they'll be trouble.
15:36
Speaker 1: All right, that's a good overview. I think I think
15:38
Speaker 1: it was a great overview, Chuck, we're in front of it.
15:42
Speaker 1: We're gonna you do have that overview glow. We're gonna
15:47
Speaker 1: take a break and we're gonna talk about science right
15:51
Speaker 1: after this. Alright, Chuck, as promised, we're gonna talk about
16:14
Speaker 1: science because, like I said, this is so boneheaded and
16:18
Speaker 1: obvious that every single person who's ever been born into
16:20
Speaker 1: a family, everybody knows this stuff. But as far as
16:25
Speaker 1: science is concerned, this is not proven that birth order
16:29
Speaker 1: effects as they're called, actually exist. That science is saying,
16:34
Speaker 1: hold your cell, your role, everybody. We can't actually prove
16:38
Speaker 1: that what everybody knows is actually true. Um. Some some
16:42
Speaker 1: studies show that, yes, there is such thing as birth
16:45
Speaker 1: order effects. Other studies show that there is no birth
16:48
Speaker 1: order effect whatsoever. And then some studies suggest that if
16:53
Speaker 1: there are birth order effects, they're so small that they
16:56
Speaker 1: are basically a blip on your personality. That all the
16:58
Speaker 1: other factors that form your personality, things like the socioeconomic
17:03
Speaker 1: status of the family you're born into, your racial background,
17:07
Speaker 1: your um gender, all the other stuff. Um, that is
17:11
Speaker 1: what really forms your personality, not the order you're born
17:15
Speaker 1: into your family. That's kind of sciences position right now. Yeah,
17:19
Speaker 1: But what they all agree on is that it is
17:22
Speaker 1: therapy cash cow right that that that yes, it's a
17:27
Speaker 1: it's a good it's a useful framework to approach psychotherapy
17:30
Speaker 1: from it. That's where I want to talk about it.
17:33
Speaker 1: At the high hourly rates. See to me, I'm like,
17:35
Speaker 1: this is sure, this is exactly what forms your personality.
17:38
Speaker 1: But I get sciences position. I respect it. So if
17:41
Speaker 1: we go back in time to the early nineteen hundreds,
17:44
Speaker 1: there was a man named Alfred Adler. He was a
17:47
Speaker 1: part of He was a contemporary of Freud, and this
17:50
Speaker 1: is when all these dudes were getting together, uh to
17:53
Speaker 1: talk about all this stuff in this burgeoning science, and
17:56
Speaker 1: they all thought they were so cool and important and
17:59
Speaker 1: um he was one of the only ones among his
18:05
Speaker 1: peers though at the time, that was talking about birth
18:08
Speaker 1: order that early. And he went on to form what
18:11
Speaker 1: we know is uh Adlerian psychology or individual psychology, and
18:17
Speaker 1: it's basically a therapy based on um, how you perceive
18:21
Speaker 1: your own level of power in your family, at your workplace,
18:26
Speaker 1: in the world at large in general, like your perceived power,
18:30
Speaker 1: place of position or status. Right, yeah, And if he
18:33
Speaker 1: believed in birth order having a significant influence on your personality,
18:38
Speaker 1: then that in turn would influence how powerful you may
18:40
Speaker 1: or may not feel. Yeah, because the addler if if
18:43
Speaker 1: how you perceived your own power, not necessarily how powerful
18:46
Speaker 1: you were, but your own perception of power was the
18:49
Speaker 1: driving force of like what how you interact with the
18:52
Speaker 1: world your personality. Um birth order would make total sense
18:56
Speaker 1: because birth order, as everybody knows, is nothing but positions
19:01
Speaker 1: of superiority or inferiority. And it's it's as simple as that.
19:05
Speaker 1: Because when you're born and you're a little kid, and
19:08
Speaker 1: you're born into a family with an older sibling, they
19:11
Speaker 1: are a couple of steps ahead of you because they've
19:13
Speaker 1: already been through a bunch of stuff, so they're inherently
19:16
Speaker 1: superior to you. They can also beat you up on
19:18
Speaker 1: a very basic level. They can twist your arm behind
19:20
Speaker 1: your back until it feels like it's going to break,
19:22
Speaker 1: and how many times you say uncle, uncle, uncle, they
19:25
Speaker 1: won't stop until they're satisfied or protect you. Like my
19:29
Speaker 1: big brother did from his friends that were jerks to me.
19:34
Speaker 1: He wouldn't stand for it. No couples. We went at
19:37
Speaker 1: it too, you know, we were brothers, but he never
19:39
Speaker 1: picked on me. You know why, because you chuck and
19:44
Speaker 1: he's Scott right. Uh. In the eighties is when I
19:47
Speaker 1: mean there were always studies starting since Adler and freud Stein,
19:50
Speaker 1: but in the nineteen eighties is when it really blew up,
19:54
Speaker 1: thanks to um, the Big and cocaine, the Big Five
19:59
Speaker 1: personality trade the view of things, um, and that's when
20:03
Speaker 1: things in the eighties, that's when everybody was just like
20:06
Speaker 1: eating the stuff up. Yeah, because so the Big Five
20:08
Speaker 1: Personality inventory is We've talked about it before, but basically
20:13
Speaker 1: it is a a self reported measure that is actually valid.
20:17
Speaker 1: It actually works, like you can say this person is
20:20
Speaker 1: highly neurotic, or this person is extroverted, or um, well
20:25
Speaker 1: three others that I can't bring to mind right now.
20:28
Speaker 1: But these things are also kind of broken into subcategories,
20:30
Speaker 1: like these are big umbrella terms have more specific subcategories.
20:34
Speaker 1: But it's actually like valid, Like somebody who fills this
20:37
Speaker 1: survey out, it's going to be an accurate assessment of
20:40
Speaker 1: their personality. So if you have somebody's personality, that's huge, right.
20:45
Speaker 1: You can say, all right, um, if this person is neurotic,
20:48
Speaker 1: they're highly neurotic. Let's see what birth order they are, Oh,
20:51
Speaker 1: they're a middle child. Let's compare them to other middle
20:53
Speaker 1: children who filled out this personality survey scored high on neurosis,
20:57
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, we can show if you're
21:00
Speaker 1: a middle child, you're far likelier to be highly neurotic
21:04
Speaker 1: under the Big Five personality inventory than the first born
21:09
Speaker 1: is right, boom bam, you just proved that birth order
21:12
Speaker 1: effects exist? Or did you? Yeah, they're like we can
21:18
Speaker 1: put people further into a box and label them um
21:22
Speaker 1: or did you? Because that is sort of the paradox
21:25
Speaker 1: that arrived that we arrive at, which is you pointed
21:28
Speaker 1: to it a little bit earlier. There are so many,
21:31
Speaker 1: so many influences that go into what makes you you that. Uh,
21:38
Speaker 1: it's hard to look at birth order as a mere
21:40
Speaker 1: small part of that. Yeah, so so like you can't
21:43
Speaker 1: account you can account for some of these and studying it.
21:46
Speaker 1: You know, there's a lot of studies over the years
21:48
Speaker 1: and they do their best, but you can't account for
21:50
Speaker 1: all of them. Well okay, so so we'll go back
21:53
Speaker 1: to that example. So you've you've just gone to your
21:56
Speaker 1: peers and said, look, I have just proven that idle
22:00
Speaker 1: children are highly neurotic compared to other children in birth orders. Right,
22:05
Speaker 1: then you're shaking your own fists around your your shoulders
22:08
Speaker 1: in triumph. And they said, well, wait a minute, wait
22:10
Speaker 1: a minute, um, did you control for socioeconomic background? And
22:14
Speaker 1: you go, uh no, I didn't. Well wait did you
22:17
Speaker 1: control for race? No? Did you control for gender? No?
22:21
Speaker 1: And so all of a sudden you realize there's all
22:23
Speaker 1: these different, um independent variables. What what what in this
22:28
Speaker 1: case would be confounding variables that might actually be the
22:31
Speaker 1: thing influencing it. It might be the fact that they
22:34
Speaker 1: are um uh feet women born into families of a
22:40
Speaker 1: low socioeconomic state that is driving neurosis, that that's actually
22:45
Speaker 1: the thing that is driving it, rather than birth order
22:47
Speaker 1: has nothing to do with being a middle child. That's
22:49
Speaker 1: just a fluke of coincidence. And like you said, there's
22:52
Speaker 1: so many confounding variables and so many things that make
22:56
Speaker 1: our personalities who we are that some people who are
22:59
Speaker 1: like birth order effects do not exist. Basically say that
23:03
Speaker 1: any birth order study that shows that they do exist
23:06
Speaker 1: has some confounding variable that that's the actual hidden thing
23:09
Speaker 1: that's driving it that you can't possibly control for everything
23:13
Speaker 1: to make a perfect, perfectly designed experiment too for birth order. Yeah,
23:18
Speaker 1: like when you start to think about, like if you
23:20
Speaker 1: were just to sit there and sort of jot down
23:21
Speaker 1: things as non scientists, just regular schmos like us, uh,
23:26
Speaker 1: and just jot down a list of what other factors
23:29
Speaker 1: might be at play. We could probably come up with
23:31
Speaker 1: a list of a hundred things between us. Let's start now.
23:35
Speaker 1: But that would like if I was studying the stuff
23:37
Speaker 1: and I started to make that list, I would just
23:39
Speaker 1: walk away and go into another line of study. I
23:42
Speaker 1: would be like, dude, I just you know where your
23:44
Speaker 1: parents married, where they divorced, When did they get divorced?
23:47
Speaker 1: Did you like hot dogs? You live with mom or dad?
23:48
Speaker 1: How far apart did they live? What could do? Were
23:50
Speaker 1: you suburban? Where you urban? Where did you live? In
23:53
Speaker 1: an excerpt, did you go up in the woods? Did
23:55
Speaker 1: you start work at twelve? Uh? For you like old timing,
24:00
Speaker 1: I started work at twelve. I guess I did too.
24:03
Speaker 1: I did a paper route. Yeah, how's a bus boy? Um?
24:06
Speaker 1: Oh wait? Was that where the guy put his foot
24:08
Speaker 1: into the what a criminal? I told you? That's a title? Max.
24:15
Speaker 1: Now that restaurant drove but not too long ago. J
24:20
Speaker 1: J's barbecue title Max. Now they're putting their foot on titles,
24:24
Speaker 1: just stomping on them. They got your money, your money,
24:28
Speaker 1: your real money. They're never gonna sponsor us. Now. Um,
24:31
Speaker 1: another few things that can confound these studies, um are
24:37
Speaker 1: things and and Ed helped us put this research together,
24:41
Speaker 1: things like demographic shifts. So he gave a great example
24:44
Speaker 1: of like the baby boom, if there's a big population
24:46
Speaker 1: bulge that also coincides with a lot of other stuff. Um.
24:51
Speaker 1: And the example he's was prevalence of cigarette smoking. Uh,
24:55
Speaker 1: there may be a false correlation there between being a
24:58
Speaker 1: firstborn and smoking, whereas if you were second born twelve
25:02
Speaker 1: years later. I guess that would fall outside that range
25:06
Speaker 1: though of gap child. Um, But that's even more confounding.
25:10
Speaker 1: The points still valid. Sure that, like there's just way
25:13
Speaker 1: more firstborns who smoked than second borns, But that's because
25:17
Speaker 1: smoking was more prevalent when there were a bunch of
25:20
Speaker 1: kids born who were all of the same cohort and
25:22
Speaker 1: all firstborns. Right, That's just one of the ways this
25:26
Speaker 1: thing can be confounded. Yeah, this one really speaks to me.
25:29
Speaker 1: Which is labeled as growth. When a birth order effect
25:33
Speaker 1: does appear, it is strongest when they subject is with
25:37
Speaker 1: their siblings, when you're a family reunion, it is so
25:42
Speaker 1: funny how that happens. I see myself do it. Like
25:46
Speaker 1: good example, I turned for a couple of weeks ago
25:51
Speaker 1: my family and my sister and her husband happened to
25:53
Speaker 1: be in town. Didn't come for that, but we were
25:56
Speaker 1: texting and I was like, hey, let's all you know,
25:58
Speaker 1: this is great, let's all go out to dinner. She's like, oh,
26:00
Speaker 1: I didn't want to. I just figured you wouldn't want
26:02
Speaker 1: to spend your birthday with your friend. You'd want to
26:04
Speaker 1: spend your birthday with your friends and not your family.
26:07
Speaker 1: And I saw Michelle when she got in town and
26:08
Speaker 1: she said the same thing in person. I was like, dude,
26:10
Speaker 1: I'm forty eight. It's like I'm not twenty two year
26:13
Speaker 1: old chuck burnout like I used to be. And she
26:17
Speaker 1: just sort of laughed. But that's a perfect example of how, like,
26:21
Speaker 1: no matter what happens in my life, I will always
26:23
Speaker 1: be the baby, and she will probably feel like she
26:26
Speaker 1: has to look out for me, which is a nice feeling. Um.
26:31
Speaker 1: I see Emily fall into patterns with her family. Uh, well,
26:35
Speaker 1: she is a She's an interesting case because she wasn't
26:39
Speaker 1: only and then has a half brother and a half sister.
26:44
Speaker 1: Her dad. Yeah, her dad went and had a son
26:47
Speaker 1: with another woman, and then her mom got married to
26:52
Speaker 1: her father in law, Steve, who already had a daughter. Um,
26:56
Speaker 1: so it's a sort of a weird mix. But I
26:58
Speaker 1: just mean in general, not even with siblings, you know,
27:01
Speaker 1: just in how their family dynamic is She's a different
27:03
Speaker 1: person when we go over there. Yeah, I think it happens.
27:06
Speaker 1: I think everybody is around their family. It's so strange. Um.
27:12
Speaker 1: So this is when it sort of started me down
27:15
Speaker 1: the path of like what is personality? Is it a
27:19
Speaker 1: is a personality trait? Is it this just? Is it
27:24
Speaker 1: repeated behaviors? Is it a set of behaviors? Like? Is
27:28
Speaker 1: that personality? Are you asking me? Yeah? I mean I
27:31
Speaker 1: don't even know, Like what is personality? We should do
27:34
Speaker 1: a show on that, Oh, we totally should. But from
27:35
Speaker 1: what I understand, just kind of briefly put it, personality
27:39
Speaker 1: is the kind of predictable way that you'll react to
27:42
Speaker 1: the world. Right. Is it easy for somebody to press
27:45
Speaker 1: your buttons? Um? Are you laid back? Are you? Like?
27:49
Speaker 1: Could somebody? However, if somebody were presented with that, and
27:53
Speaker 1: this is going terribly if somebody were presented with a uh,
27:58
Speaker 1: like an event in life. Okay, you could say Josh
28:02
Speaker 1: and probably respond to like that, that's a personality, right,
28:06
Speaker 1: But is that something inherent or is it birth order?
28:10
Speaker 1: Is it just a collection of learned behavior. I think
28:12
Speaker 1: it's a collection of learned and reinforced behaviors too. If
28:15
Speaker 1: you're told you're the baby of the family all the time,
28:17
Speaker 1: you're gonna act like the baby of the family. You're
28:19
Speaker 1: gonna act self centers, You're gonna act manipulative. It's reinforced.
28:23
Speaker 1: If you're told, um, you uh, you can do anything.
28:28
Speaker 1: You can you can go out and do anything. You
28:29
Speaker 1: can literally walk through walls because someone told you to.
28:32
Speaker 1: They reinforced that behavior. But I think that's a personality
28:35
Speaker 1: is and this is just me talking. I also believe
28:37
Speaker 1: in birth order effects, by the way, but I think
28:41
Speaker 1: that that is it's it's learned and reinforced, which means
28:45
Speaker 1: it can be unlearned. You can learn to be different. Yeah.
28:51
Speaker 1: At that same birthday dinner, I picked up the check
28:53
Speaker 1: for everyone and there was a bit of a not
28:57
Speaker 1: an argument, let me struggle. My mom and I were,
28:59
Speaker 1: you know, kind of off to the side with the
29:01
Speaker 1: people who worked there doing the credit card battle, and
29:05
Speaker 1: she she wasn't super happy and I should have just
29:07
Speaker 1: let her pay. But it's part of that thing, like
29:10
Speaker 1: I'm the baby of the family and I kind of
29:13
Speaker 1: just finally told a seck. Listen, mom, it's like it's
29:15
Speaker 1: my turn to pay. You know, I'm not the baby anymore.
29:18
Speaker 1: Like quit writing me a check for a hundred dollars
29:21
Speaker 1: on my birthday? Do you do you catch this? I
29:25
Speaker 1: mean I generally just put it in my kid's bank account.
29:27
Speaker 1: Oh that's a good thing. You know, we don't catch
29:30
Speaker 1: because also don't want to take away the joy that
29:31
Speaker 1: she gets from writing me that. That's not cool. It's
29:35
Speaker 1: like I don't need that from her, but like that's
29:37
Speaker 1: what brings her joy. Giving you money. It's complicated. So
29:41
Speaker 1: let me teach you a little a little trick. Okay,
29:44
Speaker 1: if you don't want to get into that tussle, if
29:45
Speaker 1: you just wanted to be done, sorry, it's too late.
29:48
Speaker 1: When you order, When you hand the menu back to
29:50
Speaker 1: the server, just have beholding your credit card with your
29:53
Speaker 1: thumb and give him a look. It's universal. They all know,
29:58
Speaker 1: and they'll take it and be like, and you got
30:00
Speaker 1: to first. Nobody else does that. They always wait and
30:03
Speaker 1: they pretend to go to the bathroom, like after everybody's done.
30:05
Speaker 1: It so obvious. You gotta start before the food even comes,
30:08
Speaker 1: before the drinks even come. You know what I did
30:12
Speaker 1: when we got to the restaurant. The very first thing
30:15
Speaker 1: I did was go up to the manager while everyone
30:17
Speaker 1: was being seated, said, listen, dude, my mom's going to
30:20
Speaker 1: try and pay, or one of these other chumps in
30:23
Speaker 1: my family is going to try and pay. It's like,
30:24
Speaker 1: I don't want any of them paying. It's like twelve people.
30:27
Speaker 1: I picked the place. I picked a nicer place. It's
30:30
Speaker 1: like I don't want to do that. And I was like, so,
30:32
Speaker 1: just here's my credit card. Please make sure that the
30:35
Speaker 1: server there's no battle. They didn't follow your orders. No,
30:39
Speaker 1: because my mom she tried to jump me later on
30:44
Speaker 1: the side and didn't realize I had already jumped her.
30:46
Speaker 1: So it should have been done, I know. But then
30:48
Speaker 1: we went over there. He was like, listen, man, your
30:51
Speaker 1: mom is over here now, like she's the mom. We
30:54
Speaker 1: generally side with the parents on this stuff. What place
30:57
Speaker 1: was this? It was just a restaurant. I demand to know.
31:01
Speaker 1: I'm mad. My move should have just trumped all moves
31:04
Speaker 1: because it was no, I agree, and that's what I
31:06
Speaker 1: basically said. And I was like, listen, man, I was like,
31:09
Speaker 1: there are factors at play here that I don't want
31:11
Speaker 1: to talk about. It's like just please, And my mom
31:14
Speaker 1: got a little mad and then that's I blame this manager.
31:18
Speaker 1: I think you should expose them. Well, I'm glad it
31:20
Speaker 1: all worked out in the end. Man, should we take
31:24
Speaker 1: a break? I thought we were right now, all right,
31:28
Speaker 1: we'll be back right after this. All right, we're back, Chuck.
31:51
Speaker 1: And like we said, we showed science is kind of
31:54
Speaker 1: like we're not quite sure about the birth order effect.
31:57
Speaker 1: That hasn't kept like a whole cottage field of psychology
32:01
Speaker 1: and continuing since the eighties basically NonStop. Like if you
32:05
Speaker 1: go look at birth birth order effects, there's it's very rare.
32:09
Speaker 1: You're going to run into anything that says like this
32:11
Speaker 1: is all b s. Most of it's like, yeah, this
32:14
Speaker 1: is true. Everybody knows it. Um. There have been some
32:17
Speaker 1: like prominent people in favor of like like let's say, yes,
32:22
Speaker 1: there is such thing as birth effects. And there was
32:24
Speaker 1: one guy in particular, um who made a big splash
32:27
Speaker 1: in with a book called Born to Rebel. Yeah, Frank Soloway,
32:33
Speaker 1: Frank J. Soloway, if you want to be fancy about it.
32:36
Speaker 1: And he got a MacArthur Genius grant to kind of
32:39
Speaker 1: study this and write about it, and he did. He
32:42
Speaker 1: wrote a book called Born to Rebel. It was about
32:45
Speaker 1: birth order, and the whole premise of the book was
32:47
Speaker 1: he looked at scientific revolutions throughout the ages. It's pretty interesting,
32:52
Speaker 1: identified which scientists were on which side of it, either
32:57
Speaker 1: in support of this revolutionary thinking or opposed to it,
33:02
Speaker 1: meaning that they were in favor of keeping the status quo,
33:05
Speaker 1: and then determined what birth order they had. And he
33:08
Speaker 1: found after this study, which is really that's a that's
33:12
Speaker 1: it was a big study he did. It was a
33:14
Speaker 1: pretty a lot of legwork, in a lot of research. Um,
33:17
Speaker 1: he determined that first borns are much more likely to
33:21
Speaker 1: support the status quo, whereas second borns are later borns
33:25
Speaker 1: he calls them are um much more likely to support
33:29
Speaker 1: revolutionary thinking. Yeah. And just one example, as far as
33:33
Speaker 1: uh he used Darwinism. He said later borns between eighteen
33:37
Speaker 1: fifty nine and eighteen seventy five were four point six
33:40
Speaker 1: times more likely than first borns two uh support Darwinism,
33:45
Speaker 1: yeah thinking, Yeah, yeah, so yeah, and that was one
33:49
Speaker 1: of many examples that I think there were um a
33:52
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty one historical events with sixty individuals either
33:57
Speaker 1: supporting or opposing him. So it was a big, big
33:59
Speaker 1: work for sure. Yeah. And one of his uh, I
34:02
Speaker 1: mean he he puts some reasoning behind it too, He's
34:04
Speaker 1: he was like, uh, if you're later born, you might
34:08
Speaker 1: have a hard time competing with your older who might
34:11
Speaker 1: have a tighter bond with the parents, maybe, And so
34:13
Speaker 1: that sort of symbolically forces you as to be almost
34:17
Speaker 1: an outsider within your own family, so you may be
34:19
Speaker 1: more prone to join up with an outsider opinion right
34:24
Speaker 1: to go look outside of the family union and all
34:26
Speaker 1: of the values and the ideas that it holds to
34:29
Speaker 1: to make your own mark in order to get attention
34:32
Speaker 1: or support or whatever from your parents. Whereas if you're firstborn,
34:36
Speaker 1: you just got the the easiest thing to do is
34:38
Speaker 1: to just fall in line with your parents and hence
34:41
Speaker 1: support the status quo. It makes sense, but um, born
34:45
Speaker 1: to a Belle was was torn apart by some scientists.
34:49
Speaker 1: Sure it is like this is just pure pop psychology tripe. Um.
34:54
Speaker 1: I think that's an unfair characterization of it like, the
34:56
Speaker 1: guy worked for basically twenty something years on this stuff,
34:59
Speaker 1: and in it was a very robust study. One of
35:02
Speaker 1: the pitfalls that he seemed to have run into, though,
35:05
Speaker 1: was he was analyzing historical figures um, which is really
35:11
Speaker 1: sticky stuff like like this. You can't analyze people even
35:16
Speaker 1: from afar, even if they're contemporary, let alone they've been
35:19
Speaker 1: dead for a couple of hundred years, So to base
35:22
Speaker 1: it on that is kind of is kind of difficult
35:24
Speaker 1: and tricky. But I just want to say he worked
35:27
Speaker 1: really hard on. Another part plucked from his research I
35:31
Speaker 1: thought was pretty interesting was the idea that part of
35:34
Speaker 1: this um less rebellious nature of a firstborn might be
35:39
Speaker 1: due to the long standing but now sort of antiquated
35:43
Speaker 1: practice of uh primogeniture, which is, the firstborn gets the inheritance,
35:48
Speaker 1: so they're more likely, just through thousands of years of this,
35:53
Speaker 1: more inclined to like not ruffle the feathers of the parents, right,
35:57
Speaker 1: And then the later borns who are like, I've got
36:00
Speaker 1: basically zero chance of inheriting the family titles in a state,
36:03
Speaker 1: I'll just go do my own thing. I don't have
36:05
Speaker 1: to fall in line. That makes sense as well, uh
36:07
Speaker 1: And the other interesting thing with that is another factor
36:10
Speaker 1: was the removal of a child from a family. He's
36:13
Speaker 1: found that a later born who was removed from the
36:16
Speaker 1: family and reared by a relative will end up behaving
36:19
Speaker 1: like a typical firstborn. And again I'm assuming if that's
36:22
Speaker 1: under the age of like five, but I wonder so
36:25
Speaker 1: I'm wondering if that just is supported by other research,
36:28
Speaker 1: or if all of the parenting magazine articles that mentioned
36:33
Speaker 1: that whole you know, the personality is tailored is really
36:36
Speaker 1: just citing that work. Because that's one of the big
36:39
Speaker 1: problems with pop psychology in general, is it's self reinforcing.
36:43
Speaker 1: One person says one thing and it gets picked up
36:45
Speaker 1: by a bunch of people and they're all pointing to
36:47
Speaker 1: the same thing. But since so many of them are pointing,
36:51
Speaker 1: there's so many of them out there doing the pointing,
36:53
Speaker 1: it seems like it's a very robust and like um,
36:56
Speaker 1: widespread body of work, when really it was just one
36:59
Speaker 1: study that said one thing that everybody's sighting. Well. Yeah,
37:02
Speaker 1: like in his case, he likes to site this Norwegian study.
37:05
Speaker 1: Uh it found a difference of two point three i
37:07
Speaker 1: Q points between first and second born children. UH sample
37:12
Speaker 1: size of two one subjects, it is big, but then
37:16
Speaker 1: you know, ed sort of brings up a good point
37:18
Speaker 1: like okay, maybe, but like is the two point three
37:21
Speaker 1: first of all i Q test or problematic for like
37:26
Speaker 1: a lot of reasons possibly bunk, But even if they're not,
37:30
Speaker 1: is a two point three IQ point difference even meaningful
37:34
Speaker 1: enough to be like, well look two points So no,
37:38
Speaker 1: it's it's not meaningful in that, like you know, that
37:42
Speaker 1: doesn't that's gonna lead to any like closed doors or
37:45
Speaker 1: open doors or anything. That's just such a narrow difference.
37:48
Speaker 1: But if that's like an average, and it's it is
37:50
Speaker 1: found across you know, first borns and later boards like
37:55
Speaker 1: like in a very large population like that, it is,
37:58
Speaker 1: it doesn't make you wonder like what what would that
38:00
Speaker 1: come from? It does raise more questions, you know what
38:03
Speaker 1: I mean. So, yeah, it's an insignificant difference as far
38:05
Speaker 1: as like actual intelligence goes, but it does suggest that
38:08
Speaker 1: there's something weird going on there that does have to
38:11
Speaker 1: do with birth order. Well, I guess that brings this
38:13
Speaker 1: to this really interesting thing that I had never heard
38:17
Speaker 1: of before. Had you heard of this fraternal birth order
38:22
Speaker 1: effect um, which is basically the idea, and a lot
38:27
Speaker 1: of studies have backed this up. Meta analysis of tons
38:31
Speaker 1: of studies have backed this up. The idea is that
38:34
Speaker 1: if you have multiple boys in your family, each successive
38:41
Speaker 1: boy that's born, and this is if it's just boys,
38:46
Speaker 1: has a higher chance of being gay. Right. I didn't
38:51
Speaker 1: think And when I first saw that was like, that
38:52
Speaker 1: can't be real, right, And then I did a lot
38:55
Speaker 1: more poking around. I was like, Wow, it is real.
38:57
Speaker 1: The statistics sort of bear it out. Yeah. If there's
38:59
Speaker 1: if there's a big um disagreement about whether actual just
39:03
Speaker 1: regular birth order effects exist, this one is much more
39:07
Speaker 1: supported by the data. This the fraternal birth order effect,
39:11
Speaker 1: and so much so that there is a sexologist, which
39:15
Speaker 1: if that were my field of study, I'd be like,
39:17
Speaker 1: call me sexologist Josh please. Um, I can't find his name?
39:21
Speaker 1: Is Ray something he said and I'm not sure what
39:24
Speaker 1: he was basing this on, but he said that, Um,
39:27
Speaker 1: there is a increase of thirty three percent in likelihood
39:32
Speaker 1: that you will be gay with each additional older brother
39:36
Speaker 1: you have. Now, so that means if you are born
39:39
Speaker 1: into a family and you're the youngest of four brothers,
39:41
Speaker 1: did this math, what does that mean? Because I know
39:44
Speaker 1: these people like family zero percent chance, I guess that
39:49
Speaker 1: that you are going to be um hetero, That that
39:53
Speaker 1: that you're a hundred percent chance going to be gay? Right, Well,
39:57
Speaker 1: how many it could be a hundred and six? It
39:59
Speaker 1: just going right, Yeah, I think that can't be right.
40:02
Speaker 1: Eventually you become so gay you pop out the other
40:04
Speaker 1: side and you're straight because you have like ten brothers. Well,
40:09
Speaker 1: I did see that meta analysis of multiple multiple studies
40:13
Speaker 1: indicated that between fifteen and of gay males oh their
40:19
Speaker 1: sexual orientation to this effect supposedly, okay, so so, and
40:24
Speaker 1: we should say there are some studies that have not
40:26
Speaker 1: found this. There was a big one that had There
40:28
Speaker 1: was like a survey of British young men that that
40:31
Speaker 1: surveyed like eleven thousand of them or whatever and did
40:34
Speaker 1: not find this. But so many studies have found it
40:37
Speaker 1: that science is like this, this actually might be a thing,
40:40
Speaker 1: and we're not quite sure what it is. And at
40:43
Speaker 1: first they explained it that the the more boys there are,
40:49
Speaker 1: the less social pressure there are for you to be
40:52
Speaker 1: like hetero and um and responsible for carrying on the
40:57
Speaker 1: family line, like after two three brothers, who are gonna
41:01
Speaker 1: you know, carry on the family line, go go crazy,
41:04
Speaker 1: go do what you want, and that that was the
41:06
Speaker 1: idea behind why it became likelier that you would be
41:09
Speaker 1: gay if you had more older brothers. There's a couple
41:12
Speaker 1: of things with that kind of suggests that like um
41:16
Speaker 1: being gay or not as a choice, or being straight
41:18
Speaker 1: or not as a choice rather than something biological whatever,
41:23
Speaker 1: that has kind of gone out the window. With another
41:25
Speaker 1: really surprising finding that has to do with handedness that
41:29
Speaker 1: really undermines that whole idea. Yeah, so this is so
41:33
Speaker 1: just mind blowing and interesting. So the increase and probability
41:37
Speaker 1: of a boy becoming gay is only only if that
41:41
Speaker 1: boy is right handed handed. Yep, so if you're left handed.
41:46
Speaker 1: Among left handed men, there was no statistical difference and
41:50
Speaker 1: the incidents of homosexuality even if you've got a thousand brothers.
41:53
Speaker 1: And the weird thing about that is that they've found
41:57
Speaker 1: if you are taking birth order out of the equation,
42:00
Speaker 1: if you are left handed, there's a slightly higher incidence
42:03
Speaker 1: of um being gay, just period, Yes, for for being
42:08
Speaker 1: left handed, and that's with um men and women apparently.
42:11
Speaker 1: UM So the idea that that not only does it
42:15
Speaker 1: not make you more likely to be gay, and as
42:18
Speaker 1: far as fraternal birth order is concerned, it actually negates
42:21
Speaker 1: the effects of fraternal birth order. It shows that that
42:26
Speaker 1: that social pressure from brothers doesn't have anything to do
42:29
Speaker 1: with it, because a right handed or a left handed
42:31
Speaker 1: kid is not going to be under any more or
42:33
Speaker 1: less social pressure from older brothers to be straight. Um,
42:38
Speaker 1: that makes zero sense whatsoever. And that would also suggests
42:40
Speaker 1: it's handedness that it has something to do with genetics too.
42:43
Speaker 1: If you're ambidexterous or you bisexual, I guess, so, where's
42:47
Speaker 1: that study that makes sense? So I did a little
42:51
Speaker 1: more digging in this, but I don't understand it at all.
42:54
Speaker 1: But more recently, as in just a couple of years ago,
42:57
Speaker 1: they think they found an actual um physiological biological explanation
43:05
Speaker 1: for that. If did you understand that? I don't know
43:08
Speaker 1: if they found it or if somebody made it up.
43:10
Speaker 1: And everybody's like I read a bunch of papers that
43:13
Speaker 1: said that, you know, they think this, maybe it okay,
43:16
Speaker 1: but I didn't get it. So what they what they
43:19
Speaker 1: think is that when a UM mom, when a mom
43:23
Speaker 1: carries a boy, her body has a reaction to the
43:29
Speaker 1: male male proteins, the stuff that makes him a male
43:34
Speaker 1: creates an allergic reaction of sorts in the mom, and
43:37
Speaker 1: the mom produces anybody's The first time the mom's body
43:41
Speaker 1: is totally caught off guard, has basically no effects whatsoever
43:44
Speaker 1: on the boy's development as a boy. As more and
43:48
Speaker 1: more boys are born, and just state in that same
43:52
Speaker 1: poor mom um, the antibodies get better and better at
43:56
Speaker 1: recognizing these proteins and can actually get to the point
43:59
Speaker 1: where they affect the expression of these proteins. And so
44:03
Speaker 1: what makes the boy straight from the basis of these
44:08
Speaker 1: proteins is actually affected, and they developed differently starting in
44:11
Speaker 1: the womb because the mom has developed anybody's too, basically
44:15
Speaker 1: male nous, which is the most mind boggling, amazing idea
44:20
Speaker 1: I've ever heard. That Glummery was so much better than
44:22
Speaker 1: the scientific paper summaries that I read today. Thank you,
44:25
Speaker 1: good John, Thank you you should do that. Thank I
44:28
Speaker 1: do for a living. I just did. Well, that's a
44:31
Speaker 1: good point. I thought this was interesting too. I mean,
44:34
Speaker 1: we've kind of gone over most of these birth order
44:36
Speaker 1: theories I think in general, but this one I don't
44:39
Speaker 1: think we super touched on, and I think it's really interesting.
44:42
Speaker 1: The confluence theory so This is sort of like resource
44:46
Speaker 1: delution of parents that we were talking about, like only
44:49
Speaker 1: so much emotional uh support or financial support to go around,
44:55
Speaker 1: But this takes it down to the sibling level, and
44:58
Speaker 1: it's sort of basically like if you were firstborn, uh,
45:03
Speaker 1: you are then have a degraded emotional environment and intellectual
45:07
Speaker 1: environment once you get a younger. So it's like playing
45:10
Speaker 1: tennis against better or worse competition. If you're the better
45:15
Speaker 1: tennis player, you're not gonna play as good against a
45:18
Speaker 1: lesser tennis player. And they're saying that that kind of
45:20
Speaker 1: happens with firstborns because they have to spend time with
45:23
Speaker 1: this dumb kid, this dumb baby. But the dumb baby
45:27
Speaker 1: gets a leg up exactly. That's when you play tennis
45:29
Speaker 1: against someone better than you. Eventually, that's called the tutor effect.
45:33
Speaker 1: They surpassed that firstborn, the student becomes the mass. That's right, exactly,
45:37
Speaker 1: and your skin turns to alabaster. Really interesting, is that? Sting?
45:44
Speaker 1: Well the police Okay, oh sure, I thought you were
45:49
Speaker 1: like a dream of the blue turtle Sting. No, I'm
45:52
Speaker 1: more of a nothing like the sun. Yes, synchronicity, that's
45:57
Speaker 1: good too. I'm still mad at them for that reunion
45:59
Speaker 1: to or oh yeah, they really phoned it in. You said, hey,
46:04
Speaker 1: I saw for some so I just thought of the
46:07
Speaker 1: Police and Stewart Copeland and which made me think of
46:10
Speaker 1: Less Claypool. Re members in that band with Less Claypool
46:12
Speaker 1: and Trey Anastasio. Yeah, it's called kill Me. No, it's
46:17
Speaker 1: three talented individuals. But then they made me think of
46:20
Speaker 1: Less Claypool, who was in a documentary I just saw
46:23
Speaker 1: on The Residents have seen it? No, the Residents were
46:27
Speaker 1: the mystery band right with that that, we're the big
46:31
Speaker 1: still are a mystery band, still going really Yeah, they're good, Um,
46:35
Speaker 1: but it's good. It's like it's it's an intellectual kind
46:38
Speaker 1: of like examination of of their history and everything. But
46:41
Speaker 1: it's really interesting. But Less Claypool's in it. Do you
46:44
Speaker 1: think when Less Claypool, Uh, fish guy what's his name?
46:48
Speaker 1: Trey and and Stewart Copeland and Stewart copelan you think
46:51
Speaker 1: when they got together to form that band, all they
46:54
Speaker 1: did was just sort of work out who's solos next.
46:58
Speaker 1: Probably it's like, I want to do the based solo first,
47:01
Speaker 1: and then we can go right into the guitar solo
47:03
Speaker 1: and then the drum solo and then the song's over.
47:05
Speaker 1: Hopefully the birth order of the three worked out so
47:08
Speaker 1: that it all. They were like, yes, this all makes
47:10
Speaker 1: sense to me. Man, there's nothing better than old videos
47:13
Speaker 1: of Stewart Copeland pitching fits. Oh did he? I always
47:16
Speaker 1: heard it was Sting that was the jerk to Stewart Copeland.
47:18
Speaker 1: Was Stewart Copeland the jerk? Well, Stewart Copeland was a
47:21
Speaker 1: hothead and Steyn was could poke his buttons. Oh yeah,
47:25
Speaker 1: it's pretty fun. There's some Stewart. Don't feel bad for
47:28
Speaker 1: Stuart Cope. Man, he might be. I think he might
47:31
Speaker 1: be the best drummer I ever lived, everybody says Neil part.
47:33
Speaker 1: I don't know, man, Stewart Copeland was pretty good. Oh yeah,
47:36
Speaker 1: and like crazy, uh like um doing his own thing,
47:41
Speaker 1: and he's from making what yeah, making Georgia, making Georgia. Wow,
47:47
Speaker 1: I didn't know that. This concludes this episode of stuff
47:50
Speaker 1: you should know. If you want the more about birth order,
47:53
Speaker 1: go talk to your family. We don't care. Since I
47:55
Speaker 1: said that's time for listener mail. Did you watch the
47:59
Speaker 1: Motley Crew movie yet on Netflix? No? No, I didn't
48:02
Speaker 1: know his out Yeah it's out good. Uh, no, but
48:06
Speaker 1: based on that book, it's not good, but it's great,
48:09
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? Oh yeah, it's based on
48:11
Speaker 1: the book, but it's so I mean, it feels like
48:13
Speaker 1: one of those v H one Are you literally making
48:15
Speaker 1: a note? It's sort of like one of those VH
48:17
Speaker 1: one movie music movies, like the Jackson's One. It's right,
48:21
Speaker 1: it's it's it's good. Okay, I'll check it out, all right?
48:25
Speaker 1: Who plays Vince Neil? Um? They're all, you know, the
48:30
Speaker 1: only one of the not the only thing. There's a
48:32
Speaker 1: lot of distracting parts. But the guy who plays Vince
48:35
Speaker 1: neil in his hair looks a lot like Garth, looks
48:39
Speaker 1: not like Dana Carvey is card So it's kind of
48:42
Speaker 1: hard to fully go there. The guy who played Tommy
48:47
Speaker 1: Lee is pretty good, was it Christian Navarra? No? Did
48:50
Speaker 1: he want to? He's he can't played Tommy Lee. He could,
48:52
Speaker 1: he's like six five. That kid can play anybody. Well, no,
48:55
Speaker 1: I agree. All right, it's time for listener, mail, I said,
48:58
Speaker 1: chuck the bars more Mars guy. Okay, all right, here
49:01
Speaker 1: we go. Is that from that? No? Mc marsh's Matiney group.
49:05
Speaker 1: Who is that? He's a guitar player. Oh the old creep. Yeah, yeah, sure,
49:10
Speaker 1: I know how you're talking about. I guess I never
49:12
Speaker 1: knew his name by creep. He was a creep, he
49:15
Speaker 1: was creepy. Sure, that's what I mean. All right, here
49:18
Speaker 1: we go. This is from Sam and I'm just gonna
49:21
Speaker 1: call this heartfelt. It's always nice to hear this. Hey, guys,
49:24
Speaker 1: probably could have sent this a million times, but tonight
49:27
Speaker 1: I really felt the need to. You were with me
49:29
Speaker 1: was when I transitioned from high school to college. You
49:31
Speaker 1: were there the night my dad died two years ago,
49:34
Speaker 1: and now you're here as I'm in the process of
49:36
Speaker 1: dealing with my girlfriend dumping me up to three years.
49:38
Speaker 1: You're always there, guys. Sure you hear this all the time,
49:40
Speaker 1: but I want to tell you that some tough days,
49:43
Speaker 1: on tough days, you really helped keep me saying plain
49:47
Speaker 1: and simple. Hopeim me saying not that we keep him
49:53
Speaker 1: playing and simple. I read that wrong. It's like eat
49:56
Speaker 1: shoots and leaves. That's right. I have depression and anxiety.
49:59
Speaker 1: In the podcast is a huge help on nights like
50:02
Speaker 1: this when nothing seems to help or was comforting. I
50:04
Speaker 1: can tell if things get really bad, if even the
50:07
Speaker 1: podcast doesn't help you. Guys have also been like role
50:11
Speaker 1: models for me. So uh um, this is all just
50:16
Speaker 1: to say thank you so much. Guys. Who knows how
50:18
Speaker 1: much darker some spots in my life we've been without
50:21
Speaker 1: you could say much more, but I think I got
50:23
Speaker 1: the message across. That is from Sam and he says, PS,
50:28
Speaker 1: I am a he him and I spank this email
50:30
Speaker 1: on the bottom. Oh good, that's how we got here.
50:33
Speaker 1: That's right. Nice work. Um. If you want to get
50:36
Speaker 1: in touch with us like Sam did, thank you very much. Sam.
50:38
Speaker 1: By the way, that was very sweet of you to
50:40
Speaker 1: tell us all that. I hope you're pulling through. Yeah,
50:42
Speaker 1: hanging there man. Um. You can get in touch with
50:45
Speaker 1: us by going to Stuff you Should Know dot com
50:47
Speaker 1: and clicking on our social links, and you can also
50:51
Speaker 1: send us an email like Sam did. Don't forget to
50:53
Speaker 1: spank it on the bottom to stuff podcast at i
50:56
Speaker 1: heart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a
51:02
Speaker 1: production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts
51:05
Speaker 1: for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
51:08
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H