Latest / Stuff You Should Know / Birth Order: So nice, we did it twice
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- 0:00Speaker 1: Hey, everyone, Josh and Chuck here to remind you that
- 0:03Speaker 1: our last three shows of the year. Boy, this is
- 0:06Speaker 1: a good show this year are taking place very soon
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- 0:16Speaker 1: Just go to stuff youshould know dot com and click
- 0:18Speaker 1: on the tour link and you can get all your
- 0:20Speaker 1: tickets right there.
- 0:23Speaker 3: Welcome to Stuff you should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
- 0:33Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast again, right Chuck.
- 0:37Speaker 1: That's right, everybody. This was a very strange case, very
- 0:41Speaker 1: rare in which we actually recorded an entire episode again
- 0:46Speaker 1: that we had already recorded. It was my fault for
- 0:49Speaker 1: picking it, but to be fair, nobody else noticed either.
- 0:52Speaker 2: Nope, not at all.
- 0:54Speaker 1: But we decided to release this anyway because we listened
- 0:57Speaker 1: to the episodes and we thought it was kind of
- 1:00Speaker 1: fun and it might be kind of like a live
- 1:02Speaker 1: in Laura is a bit of a stuff you should
- 1:04Speaker 1: know easter egg right.
- 1:05Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, And we really wish we could say it
- 1:07Speaker 2: was unique rather than just rare. But this is the
- 1:09Speaker 2: second time we've done this. See our Black Holes episodes
- 1:14Speaker 2: that's right. So here we go again, everybody with the
- 1:17Speaker 2: Birth Order, Episode round two. We hope you like it.
- 1:22Speaker 3: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
- 1:32Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and
- 1:34Speaker 2: there's Charles w Chuck Bryant and Jerry He's here. And
- 1:39Speaker 2: you put the three of us together, you got pretty
- 1:41Speaker 2: good zip ship going zipship?
- 1:44Speaker 1: Is that a word?
- 1:45Speaker 2: Oh, he didn't read that one thing I sent you.
- 1:48Speaker 1: I did, but I didn't pick out that word.
- 1:51Speaker 2: Yes, sibship it is the total siblings in a family.
- 1:57Speaker 1: I love that, isn't that neat? Yeah?
- 2:00Speaker 2: And you can have high sib ships That means your
- 2:02Speaker 2: parents got it on a bunch of times without any protection.
- 2:06Speaker 2: The second is the low sib ship, which means your
- 2:10Speaker 2: parents were maybe be a little cold to one another.
- 2:12Speaker 2: And then the third one the midsig sib ship, which
- 2:16Speaker 2: I just made up, but I like.
- 2:18Speaker 1: Threes or low means they they got it on a lot,
- 2:22Speaker 1: but you know, used protection.
- 2:25Speaker 2: Yeah, Or they're highly intelligent don't want to ruin the
- 2:27Speaker 2: planet with extra people. It's another possible interpretation.
- 2:33Speaker 1: I'm sure you won't hear about that one at all.
- 2:35Speaker 2: No, definitely not. It's not me. I'm talking about the
- 2:39Speaker 2: people who are into that kind of thinking other people.
- 2:43Speaker 2: I can't remember there's a society for that, and I
- 2:45Speaker 2: cannot oh the something first, it's like society for human extinction.
- 2:51Speaker 2: They're like, we don't want to kill anybody alive, but
- 2:53Speaker 2: we just want to stop reproducing because we're ruining the planet.
- 2:57Speaker 2: I can't remember the name of them.
- 2:59Speaker 1: I wonder if it's a named as an acronym that
- 3:01Speaker 1: just spells.
- 3:02Speaker 2: Ugh it spells die die die. Oh goodness, Well, Chuck,
- 3:10Speaker 2: I'm excited about this one. This is a good pick
- 3:13Speaker 2: from you, and it was a great assist from our
- 3:16Speaker 2: friend Dave Ruse. And we're talking about birth order, and
- 3:21Speaker 2: it's one of those things that like everybody knows birth order.
- 3:24Speaker 2: I mean, it was even on the Brady bunch, like
- 3:26Speaker 2: jan was clearly the middle child, yeah, the middle daughter
- 3:30Speaker 2: at least, and really kind of bore that chip on
- 3:33Speaker 2: her shoulder. Little Bobby Brady, he was the youngest, and
- 3:38Speaker 2: he was often neglected as a result. He had to
- 3:41Speaker 2: kind of make his own way and find out that
- 3:43Speaker 2: he was really into pork shops and apple shawsh and
- 3:48Speaker 2: so on and so forth right. So everybody knows about
- 3:50Speaker 2: birth order. But it turns out I didn't realize this.
- 3:54Speaker 2: It's had a long history of being presented scientifically and
- 3:58Speaker 2: then refuted scientifically, and then we'll come back again, and
- 4:01Speaker 2: then it's gone again, and then it's going to come
- 4:02Speaker 2: back at you one more time. Kind of like that.
- 4:05Speaker 1: Yeah, so we're going to go over those ups and downs.
- 4:08Speaker 1: I'm sure we'll toss in our own opinions here and
- 4:11Speaker 1: there that have no basis in sciences. Sure, because I
- 4:15Speaker 1: have a as everyone knows, I'm the youngest I know.
- 4:18Speaker 1: I have an older brother that's three years older. Yep, Scott.
- 4:22Speaker 1: We've talked about a lot, so great, he's the best.
- 4:25Speaker 1: And I have a sister that is six years older. Huh.
- 4:29Speaker 1: She is the eldest. My sister Michelle, she's also great, yep.
- 4:33Speaker 1: And so it's like, you know, three years apart, three
- 4:35Speaker 1: years apart, nothing. Because I think some of this stuff
- 4:38Speaker 1: can be sort of taken with a grain of salt,
- 4:41Speaker 1: Like if you have, you know, the surprise baby that's
- 4:43Speaker 1: you know, fourteen years younger than anyone else in your family,
- 4:47Speaker 1: things might you know, be different. And then some people
- 4:49Speaker 1: say it makes no difference at all about your eventual personality.
- 4:53Speaker 1: But I guess to recap we should just go up
- 4:56Speaker 1: over how it typically breaks down, which is, if you're
- 4:59Speaker 1: the first born, then people will say, Oh, you're probably
- 5:03Speaker 1: gonna be bossier. You're probably gonna be an overachiever, maybe
- 5:07Speaker 1: a perfectionist, maybe a little neurotic. If you're the middle
- 5:11Speaker 1: child or the second born, you're probably gonna be a
- 5:14Speaker 1: peacemaker and a people pleaser. And then if you're the
- 5:18Speaker 1: baby of the family, then you're just a little spoiled brat,
- 5:22Speaker 1: but you're probably gonna be adventurous because you were left
- 5:25Speaker 1: to your own devices and you answer to nobody, so
- 5:28Speaker 1: you just go off and join the Peace Corps or something.
- 5:31Speaker 2: Sure, then there's also only children, which are kind of
- 5:36Speaker 2: their own thing.
- 5:37Speaker 1: But they, yeah, we should do a whole thing on onlies.
- 5:39Speaker 2: I think sure, they very much resemble of the other ones.
- 5:44Speaker 2: They much more resemble the firstborn child. Yeah, but a
- 5:47Speaker 2: weirder version of a firstborn. So the thing is is, like,
- 5:52Speaker 2: all of this sounds totally true and obvious, but it
- 5:56Speaker 2: just is not fully born out in the research. It's
- 6:02Speaker 2: kind of Dave compares it to a horoscope where you
- 6:05Speaker 2: can kind of see yourself or your siblings, and you know,
- 6:09Speaker 2: any one of these things. It just kind of makes sense.
- 6:11Speaker 2: And we have this selection bias and confirmation bias where
- 6:16Speaker 2: we just pick out the stuff that agrees with us,
- 6:19Speaker 2: and we ignore the points about say a middle child
- 6:22Speaker 2: or a a firstborn child that don't quite fit. We
- 6:25Speaker 2: just kind of discard that stuff. And because all of
- 6:28Speaker 2: us have some form of family, typically we all have
- 6:34Speaker 2: like anecdotal experience with that. And even if you don't
- 6:36Speaker 2: have a family, you're probably a friend of somebody who
- 6:39Speaker 2: has a family, so you've observed it yourself. So that
- 6:42Speaker 2: means that it's just supported that much more through your
- 6:45Speaker 2: own experience, which means it's been really hard to shake.
- 6:48Speaker 1: That's right. And that horoscope thing, not to say Dave
- 6:53Speaker 1: is not a free thinker, but a lot of people
- 6:55Speaker 1: compare it to horoscopes. As it turns out.
- 6:58Speaker 2: Yeah, and another thing, you can call it his pop
- 7:00Speaker 2: psychology for sure.
- 7:02Speaker 1: Yeah. So we should go back to the beginning, I guess,
- 7:09Speaker 1: which is to say the nineteenth century. As far as
- 7:12Speaker 1: the science on birth order goes to eighteen seventy four
- 7:16Speaker 1: with someone named that we've talked about a few times
- 7:18Speaker 1: on the show Francis Galton. I know that we talked
- 7:23Speaker 1: about Galton on episodes where he talked about eugenics, but
- 7:26Speaker 1: I'm sure other things have come up as well.
- 7:29Speaker 2: Yeah, he was a polymath, but he was well known
- 7:31Speaker 2: for eugenics, genetics. He came up with fingerprinting catalogs like
- 7:37Speaker 2: he did all sorts.
- 7:38Speaker 1: Of stuff, that's right. So he was the half cousin
- 7:42Speaker 1: of Charles Darwin, and he had a book called English
- 7:46Speaker 1: Men of Science. Kind of sounds like Real Men of Genius.
- 7:50Speaker 2: I was going to say it was adapted into a
- 7:52Speaker 2: series of bud like commercials later.
- 7:53Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what it seems like. Colon of course their
- 7:57Speaker 1: Nature and Nurture in which he he basically was kind
- 8:01Speaker 1: of keen to investigate the origin of genius. So what
- 8:05Speaker 1: better place to go than to study the gentlemen of
- 8:08Speaker 1: the Royal Society, Royal Society of London at the oldest
- 8:12Speaker 1: scientific academy in the world. And he got ninety nine guys.
- 8:16Speaker 1: It's very strange that he didn't get one hundred, but
- 8:19Speaker 1: he didn't get one hundred, and he did a lot
- 8:22Speaker 1: of research and got a lot of data on these gentlemen,
- 8:25Speaker 1: including birth order stuff.
- 8:28Speaker 2: Yeah, but also mother's hair color. He measured their heads.
- 8:31Speaker 2: He really went to town on these ninety nine englishmen
- 8:34Speaker 2: of science. And what he found out when he kind
- 8:37Speaker 2: of crunched all the data was that sixty one of
- 8:41Speaker 2: the ninety nine members that he profiled of the Royal
- 8:44Speaker 2: Society were among the oldest in their family. They were
- 8:49Speaker 2: either only children, only sons I should say they were
- 8:53Speaker 2: only or they were eldest sons, or if they were
- 8:56Speaker 2: middle born, they were toward the top of the middle born,
- 9:00Speaker 2: the earlier side of the middle born cohort. That's right,
- 9:04Speaker 2: And if there was no effect on birth order and genius,
- 9:08Speaker 2: then it should have been basically forty five and a
- 9:11Speaker 2: half forty five and a half, right, and spare a
- 9:15Speaker 2: thought for those poor half people.
- 9:17Speaker 1: That's right. What about the other ten percent? Though?
- 9:21Speaker 2: I think that's uh, that's jerry Okay, So wait wait, yeah, yeah,
- 9:29Speaker 2: you're right, you're right. So no, no, yeah, forty did
- 9:33Speaker 2: I say forty nine and a half or forty five.
- 9:35Speaker 1: And a half? Well what do you think?
- 9:38Speaker 2: Let me rephrase that and say forty nine and a half.
- 9:41Speaker 1: Okay, Okay, I got you, because you came up with
- 9:45Speaker 1: ninety one I did, and yeah, so I got it
- 9:48Speaker 1: wrong too. I said, what about the ten people? It
- 9:50Speaker 1: was really nine people?
- 9:51Speaker 2: Yeah, plus you said ten percent. So this whole thing
- 9:53Speaker 2: was screwed up, right, just royally all right.
- 9:56Speaker 1: So he concluded based on this, and this is a
- 10:00Speaker 1: quote that I would I don't know if you take requests,
- 10:02Speaker 1: but I would love for you to read this in
- 10:04Speaker 1: the voice of Smigel.
- 10:10Speaker 2: Okay, let's see. Do you remember I think I do so.
- 10:15Speaker 1: I like to think Snegel lives in you in some
- 10:18Speaker 1: way a little bit.
- 10:19Speaker 2: Okay, so we said that, oh man, elder sons have
- 10:26Speaker 2: on the whole decided advantages of nurture over the younger ones.
- 10:31Speaker 2: They're treated more as companions by their parents and have
- 10:35Speaker 2: earlier responsibility, both of which would develop independence of character
- 10:41Speaker 2: and in less well to new families. The oldest child
- 10:45Speaker 2: has the advantage of better nourishment in his infancy compared
- 10:49Speaker 2: to the later board siblings.
- 10:53Speaker 1: Pretty close. I feel like that was Smiegel's brother, Spiegel
- 10:59Speaker 1: Spiegel not bad though.
- 11:03Speaker 2: So how do you ever remember what Snigel sounds like?
- 11:06Speaker 1: I listened to that every night. Okay, this might go
- 11:09Speaker 1: to bed music.
- 11:09Speaker 2: That makes sense.
- 11:11Speaker 1: So if you were too uh, disadvantaged in being thrown
- 11:16Speaker 1: off by Josh's hilarious reading. Just a quick recap basically is,
- 11:22Speaker 1: if you're the oldest, then you have an advantage because
- 11:25Speaker 1: you're like your parents' buddy. You got a lot more responsibility,
- 11:29Speaker 1: so you're gonna be more independent.
- 11:31Speaker 3: Uh.
- 11:32Speaker 1: And then if you're a family that's maybe doesn't have
- 11:34Speaker 1: as much money, then if you're the oldest and you're
- 11:37Speaker 1: gonna you're gonna get the chicken on the table and
- 11:39Speaker 1: not be fighting for that chicken like your little brothers
- 11:42Speaker 1: and sisters will.
- 11:42Speaker 2: Be, especially in infancy because you were the only one,
- 11:45Speaker 2: so you got all the baby food.
- 11:47Speaker 1: Yeah, this doesn't sound I mean, I know a lot
- 11:49Speaker 1: of this poo poos the science, but this doesn't sound
- 11:53Speaker 1: wildly unreasonable to me as a you know.
- 11:55Speaker 2: No, it's echoed still today in our ideas of birth
- 11:59Speaker 2: order and explaining it. Yeah. So that was Francis Galton.
- 12:04Speaker 2: We'll leave him and I think probably until I guess
- 12:09Speaker 2: about the Actually, not that far after I think he
- 12:12Speaker 2: was speaking. He wrote in what the last quarter of
- 12:17Speaker 2: the nineteenth century, right, So, I mean just less than
- 12:21Speaker 2: fifty years later, a guy named Alfred Adler, who was
- 12:25Speaker 2: a psychologist kind of picked that up and ran with it,
- 12:30Speaker 2: not just entirely birth order, but birth order was a
- 12:33Speaker 2: part of his larger theory called Adlerian psychology or individual psychology.
- 12:38Speaker 2: And there were basically three founders of psychotherapy as we
- 12:42Speaker 2: know it today. There was Adler, Freud and Jung. And
- 12:45Speaker 2: Freud and Jung's ideas have been largely dismissed. Alfred Adler's
- 12:50Speaker 2: ideas are basically the premise for how we approach psychology today.
- 12:55Speaker 1: Yeah, and he's a he's an interesting guy. He was
- 12:58Speaker 1: a colleague of Freud, and I think through history it
- 13:01Speaker 1: seems obvious that a lot of people have kind of
- 13:04Speaker 1: said like he was an acolyte or Freud was his mentor,
- 13:08Speaker 1: and he went through great pains over the years to
- 13:11Speaker 1: say he called me first, Like he would go to
- 13:15Speaker 1: reporters and say, look, here's a telegram where Freud got
- 13:19Speaker 1: in touch with me and wanted to talk to me.
- 13:21Speaker 2: Oh he was like that, huh.
- 13:23Speaker 1: Well, I just think he had a little bit of
- 13:25Speaker 1: a sort of maybe younger sibling syndrome, and that will
- 13:31Speaker 1: you know, you'll see that kind of plays out a
- 13:32Speaker 1: little bit in his own sibling dynamic. Yeah, his research.
- 13:35Speaker 2: His older brother was named Sigmund two, so I just
- 13:39Speaker 2: been freudiant he might have been.
- 13:42Speaker 1: Yeah, they were together, he and Freud for about nine
- 13:44Speaker 1: years studying, but then when they split apart, and some
- 13:48Speaker 1: people say that it had a lot to do with
- 13:50Speaker 1: this sibling dynamic and birth order thing. I think it
- 13:54Speaker 1: was more complicated than that, definitely, But they never talked
- 13:57Speaker 1: again after that. No, they were done.
- 13:59Speaker 2: Yeah, but Adler's ideas went on. It's definitely worth looking into.
- 14:03Speaker 2: He basically says that the whole basis of our individual
- 14:09Speaker 2: psychology comes out of our social interactions. We learn how
- 14:14Speaker 2: to approach life in the world through our interactions early
- 14:17Speaker 2: on with our family. That's he called that our lifestyle.
- 14:21Speaker 2: There's a web of interactions between parents and kids and
- 14:25Speaker 2: also among siblings he called the family constellation. And then
- 14:28Speaker 2: he also said that like, basically the point of life
- 14:31Speaker 2: was to be a good, contributing member of a society
- 14:36Speaker 2: that is working toward positivity and equality. He was way
- 14:40Speaker 2: ahead of his time, because this guy was writing one
- 14:42Speaker 2: hundred years ago and now we're just starting to adopt
- 14:45Speaker 2: his philosophies. Is like not just valid, Like that's the
- 14:50Speaker 2: point of individual psychology.
- 14:53Speaker 1: Yeah, he has a good quote too, and again this
- 14:56Speaker 1: seems very reasonable to me when he says, it is
- 14:59Speaker 1: a common fallacy to imagine that children of the same
- 15:02Speaker 1: family are formed in the same environment. Of course, there's
- 15:05Speaker 1: much which is the same for all in the same home,
- 15:07Speaker 1: but the psychic situation of each child is individual and
- 15:11Speaker 1: differs from that of others because of the order of
- 15:14Speaker 1: their succession.
- 15:15Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 15:15Speaker 1: So he's basically saying something that like you said, a
- 15:20Speaker 1: lot of people hang their hat on, which is like, hey,
- 15:22Speaker 1: just because you grew up in the same house doesn't
- 15:24Speaker 1: mean you grew up in the same house. You know
- 15:26Speaker 1: what I mean.
- 15:26Speaker 2: Exactly, And he gave an example of that that kind
- 15:29Speaker 2: of really figured into his theory about birth order, which
- 15:32Speaker 2: was to him another big driver personality that came out
- 15:35Speaker 2: of the early experience in the family is that especially
- 15:39Speaker 2: older and middle children, or actually I guess older and
- 15:42Speaker 2: middle children only went through the trauma of being dethroned.
- 15:48Speaker 2: They were, you know, at one point, if you were
- 15:51Speaker 2: the firstborn, the only one, and then all of a
- 15:53Speaker 2: sudden another one comes along and you're not the shining
- 15:55Speaker 2: star of your parents' universe any longer. You have to
- 15:59Speaker 2: share that with somebody, and he identified that as a
- 16:01Speaker 2: trauma and that that alone would significantly contribute to a
- 16:06Speaker 2: child's personality, and that was based on birth order.
- 16:10Speaker 1: All right, boy, that's a great setup, I think. So
- 16:13Speaker 1: let's take a break. Yes, yes, Smiel, what do you think? Yes, perfect,
- 16:20Speaker 1: and we're going to come back and break down his
- 16:22Speaker 1: thoughts on this whole dethroning of what that meant right
- 16:24Speaker 1: after this shot shot. All right, So this isn't that
- 16:52Speaker 1: much different as far as what birth order means, but
- 16:55Speaker 1: it's a little more specific to his own findings and
- 16:58Speaker 1: thoughts on the matter. So, if you're oldest, like you said,
- 17:02Speaker 1: you're dethroned once there's a sibling below you, and when
- 17:06Speaker 1: that happens, there's a chance you might become a problem
- 17:08Speaker 1: because you're trying to get that attention again, you might
- 17:10Speaker 1: act out. You will likely feel responsible for your younger
- 17:15Speaker 1: siblings as if you're a parent, that can make you
- 17:18Speaker 1: pretty neurotic. So that checks that box, and you really
- 17:23Speaker 1: may act as a parent. You may kind of help
- 17:25Speaker 1: raise the kids, especially back then when the parents are
- 17:27Speaker 1: away or the parents are busy. You might be that
- 17:29Speaker 1: parental authority in a lot of cases. So you may
- 17:33Speaker 1: have a positive view of authority, and because of all
- 17:37Speaker 1: of this stuff, you're probably gonna be pretty hard working,
- 17:40Speaker 1: and that perfectionist thing comes in pretty conscientious.
- 17:43Speaker 2: Yes, So that's the oldest, right, that's right next to
- 17:47Speaker 2: second born. If there's two, there's just two kids, this
- 17:50Speaker 2: applies to them. They are constantly keeping up or trying
- 17:56Speaker 2: to compete with the older sibling. So life is a
- 17:59Speaker 2: little bit exhausting. And this is something that Adler himself
- 18:03Speaker 2: went through with his older brother Sigmund he as he
- 18:07Speaker 2: kind of identified the older sibling then having more of
- 18:11Speaker 2: an influence in some cases than the actual parents do
- 18:14Speaker 2: on the child's development. Which makes a lot of sense too,
- 18:16Speaker 2: because that older child is being a mini parent to
- 18:19Speaker 2: the second child. Right If they if the kids finding
- 18:23Speaker 2: like they're just constantly are being beat by the by
- 18:26Speaker 2: the older sibling, who doesn't even seem to be aware
- 18:28Speaker 2: that they're in a competition, they're still winning, they might
- 18:31Speaker 2: just go off in a totally different direction and whatever
- 18:34Speaker 2: they've identified the older sibling to be, like Alex P.
- 18:38Speaker 2: Keaton young Republican type, they're going to go the exact
- 18:40Speaker 2: opposite way and start following the grateful.
- 18:42Speaker 1: Dead like Tinay others did exactly.
- 18:47Speaker 2: Man that name, it doesn't matter Tena others. It's the
- 18:50Speaker 2: ultimate name. It was. There's Mallory, Alex and.
- 18:56Speaker 1: Others.
- 18:57Speaker 2: Yeah, if they didn't use Tenay others, I think that
- 18:59Speaker 2: was a big miss that the writers walk.
- 19:00Speaker 1: Past, I know, and that should They should only have
- 19:03Speaker 1: called her by teen the others, not Peter right exactly.
- 19:06Speaker 2: And then like in the credits, it says tiny others
- 19:08Speaker 2: as Tina others.
- 19:09Speaker 1: Yeah, as herself. So we mentioned earlier I think I
- 19:13Speaker 1: did about Adler's own situation at home, and it turns out,
- 19:19Speaker 1: beyond Freud, he had an actual older brother, like you said,
- 19:23Speaker 1: whose name was Sigmund, and he sort of had issues
- 19:29Speaker 1: with it. He always was trying to live up to
- 19:30Speaker 1: this older brother. Sigmund right complained about it a lot.
- 19:33Speaker 1: It seemed like I think there was a biographer when
- 19:37Speaker 1: he was a little bit older where he said, my
- 19:39Speaker 1: eldest brother, he was always ahead of me. He's still
- 19:42Speaker 1: ahead of me.
- 19:43Speaker 2: Which is true. He's never going to catch up to
- 19:45Speaker 2: his eldest brother, at least in birth order.
- 19:47Speaker 1: Well, that's right.
- 19:48Speaker 2: He also had two younger brothers. One adored Adler kind
- 19:52Speaker 2: of bucked the trend. The other one felt competitive with Adler,
- 19:57Speaker 2: so he was in the position that Adler was with Sigmund. Yeah,
- 20:01Speaker 2: the middle child. So say you're having your parents are
- 20:04Speaker 2: just hitting it fast and loose, and they're having more
- 20:06Speaker 2: and more children. The middle children are going to have
- 20:08Speaker 2: their own kind of baggage to carry around. They're frequently
- 20:13Speaker 2: they frequently feel forgotten, ignored, neglected, jam bradyish. They may be.
- 20:19Speaker 2: They may decide that life is extraordinarily unfair, that they're invisible,
- 20:24Speaker 2: and that might really make them neurotic in their own way.
- 20:28Speaker 2: And then this really makes a lot of sense to
- 20:31Speaker 2: me too. They may find that family constellation that Adler
- 20:36Speaker 2: said was so important in your development and in your
- 20:38Speaker 2: youth elsewhere outside of the family, they're the kid that
- 20:42Speaker 2: goes off and is like, yeah, whatever, you guys have
- 20:44Speaker 2: your fun little you know, family barbecue. I'm going to
- 20:47Speaker 2: go hang out at my friend's house instead. I like
- 20:49Speaker 2: their family more.
- 20:51Speaker 1: Yeah, which is interesting because I think that flies in
- 20:54Speaker 1: the face a little bit of the typical middle child
- 20:57Speaker 1: thing of being a people pleaser and a uni Uh.
- 21:02Speaker 2: Yeah, that's funny because I think of the younger child
- 21:04Speaker 2: as a people pleaser.
- 21:06Speaker 1: Oh really, because that's usually the middle child thing.
- 21:09Speaker 2: This is the thing, this is where it exactly fall apart.
- 21:12Speaker 1: Exactly. Well, because also in my family, like you know,
- 21:16Speaker 1: my sister, she did fine in school, I did fine
- 21:18Speaker 1: in school, but my brother was like right in the middle,
- 21:21Speaker 1: and he was the he's the really smart guy. Sure, yeah,
- 21:25Speaker 1: so he set the bar as number two. But I
- 21:28Speaker 1: also felt like I never felt like I had to
- 21:30Speaker 1: live up to that.
- 21:31Speaker 2: Oh that's good, that's healthy and lucky.
- 21:34Speaker 1: Lucky because I didn't strive to. I wasn't like, no,
- 21:37Speaker 1: I can't be as smart as Scott, so I'll just
- 21:39Speaker 1: do my own thing. I just didn't really think about it.
- 21:41Speaker 1: And my parents, well I was about to say they
- 21:43Speaker 1: didn't put that kind of pressure on me, but they
- 21:45Speaker 1: just there was not a lot of attension on me
- 21:48Speaker 1: by the time I came around.
- 21:49Speaker 2: Oh yeah, you was your own thing, right, yeah, exactly.
- 21:53Speaker 1: So well, here we are then, at the youngest, I'm
- 21:56Speaker 1: talking about myself pampered and spoiled, which I was not,
- 22:00Speaker 1: because less is expected. Like we mentioned earlier, you're probably
- 22:04Speaker 1: going to be a little more adventurous. I definitely was
- 22:07Speaker 1: more adventurous and as sort of the black cheap in
- 22:10Speaker 1: my family, but I don't think it was because less
- 22:13Speaker 1: it's expected of me. And then, you know, Adler at
- 22:16Speaker 1: the end talks about how the successful men of our
- 22:20Speaker 1: time and I think of all times oftentimes were the youngest,
- 22:25Speaker 1: and he mentions like people in the Bible, and he
- 22:27Speaker 1: even mentions, this is where he lose me a little bit.
- 22:29Speaker 1: I mentioned fairy tales and I'm like, so the people
- 22:32Speaker 1: in these made up stories, the youngest were more successful.
- 22:36Speaker 1: So that means something to science.
- 22:38Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, that's where I actually wrote careful Adler after that,
- 22:41Speaker 2: because it's he got you know, he had some really
- 22:44Speaker 2: great theories. And then one of the big problems of
- 22:45Speaker 2: early twentieth century psychologists is they just look out in
- 22:49Speaker 2: places that didn't really apply and use them as proof.
- 22:52Speaker 2: And that's a good example of that, because his theories
- 22:54Speaker 2: are very sound and they make a lot of sense.
- 22:56Speaker 2: They're well thought out. It's just you don't run out
- 22:58Speaker 2: to the Bible to your point. It doesn't that's not
- 23:01Speaker 2: how science works typically.
- 23:03Speaker 1: Yeah, look at King David exactly.
- 23:07Speaker 2: And then we're at only Children, which okay, we'll do
- 23:09Speaker 2: a whole episode on them, but they have they have
- 23:13Speaker 2: the advantage of being the sole recipient of their parents'
- 23:18Speaker 2: attention and focus and love and adoration, just like a
- 23:21Speaker 2: first board child. But they never go through the trauma
- 23:24Speaker 2: of being dethroned, so they are basically little kings and
- 23:29Speaker 2: queens who.
- 23:29Speaker 1: Run the show on top.
- 23:31Speaker 2: Essentially.
- 23:31Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, a king who's not dethroned. He's a king exactly.
- 23:36Speaker 2: That's true. And Adler wrote that they retain the center
- 23:39Speaker 2: of the stage without effort. They're generally pampered, and they
- 23:42Speaker 2: form a style of life based on being supported by
- 23:45Speaker 2: others and at the same time ruling them.
- 23:48Speaker 1: Great combination, Yeah, totally. Hodgman talks a lot about being
- 23:52Speaker 1: an only child. It's very funny to hear him muse
- 23:54Speaker 1: on the stuff. All right, So these theories were out
- 23:59Speaker 1: there in the nineteen twenties basically through for about sixty
- 24:05Speaker 1: something years, it was sort of just commonly accepted that
- 24:09Speaker 1: this was the case. They had done studies it backed
- 24:11Speaker 1: up a lot of this, and then a funny thing
- 24:13Speaker 1: happened in the nineteen eighties. In fact, in nineteen eighty three,
- 24:17Speaker 1: there were a couple of Swiss psychologists, Jules Angst and
- 24:21Speaker 1: Cecil Ernst, and they said, you know what, this is
- 24:25Speaker 1: all poo poo, and we're going to write our own
- 24:27Speaker 1: book called Birth Order Colon. It's poopoo. Actually it's birth
- 24:34Speaker 1: order its influence on personality. And they went back looked
- 24:38Speaker 1: at all these studies, like fifteen hundred studies from the
- 24:41Speaker 1: mid forties to nineteen eighty. A lot of these studies
- 24:44Speaker 1: had backed up Adler's theories and stuff like this. But
- 24:49Speaker 1: they said, you know what, the closer we looked, the
- 24:51Speaker 1: more we picked this apart. There are a lot of
- 24:52Speaker 1: fallacies in here. There are a lot of methodological pitfalls.
- 24:56Speaker 1: And basically I think that there is like birth order
- 25:00Speaker 1: effect really doesn't have anything to do with personality at
- 25:03Speaker 1: least no much more than anything else that we could
- 25:05Speaker 1: kind of find out.
- 25:06Speaker 2: Yeah, they definitely poo pooted it. One of the examples
- 25:09Speaker 2: they gave was that there was a meta analysis of
- 25:13Speaker 2: previous previous studies of birth order findings, which means that
- 25:20Speaker 2: it's a they compile a bunch of findings from a
- 25:22Speaker 2: bunch of different studies and apply statistical analysis of it.
- 25:25Speaker 2: They turned these smaller sample sizes into one large sample size,
- 25:29Speaker 2: and of course it found a positive correlation between the
- 25:34Speaker 2: birth order and personality traits. But those particular researchers said, well,
- 25:41Speaker 2: we didn't actually include any studies that didn't find a
- 25:43Speaker 2: positive correlation between birth order and personality traits. We only
- 25:47Speaker 2: studied ones that did show that. That's like does some
- 25:52Speaker 2: junk science right there. And that's the kind of thing
- 25:54Speaker 2: that Angst and Ernst were saying, like, this is the
- 25:57Speaker 2: quality of the studies heretofore and when you really look
- 26:00Speaker 2: at the methodology and all the like their findings, like
- 26:03Speaker 2: it just does not add up that you can't replicate them.
- 26:06Speaker 1: Yeah, they in fact it they had a pretty sick burn.
- 26:10Speaker 1: They called it post hoc theory, which is basically like
- 26:13Speaker 1: you can go into these studies and you can find
- 26:17Speaker 1: whatever you're looking for if you kind of just pick
- 26:20Speaker 1: apart different parts of it and cherry picked different parts
- 26:23Speaker 1: of it. And they use one good example they use
- 26:26Speaker 1: was anxiety and which children in a family had the
- 26:31Speaker 1: highest anxiety levels and reported those levels. And they said,
- 26:35Speaker 1: you know, if you look if you're Adler or others,
- 26:38Speaker 1: you have an explanation for all of them. So if
- 26:40Speaker 1: it's the youngest, it's because you're the weakest sibling. Which
- 26:45Speaker 1: is that true?
- 26:47Speaker 2: I think they mean physically, your older siblings are generally
- 26:50Speaker 2: bigger and stronger than you.
- 26:52Speaker 1: Is that true?
- 26:53Speaker 2: Typically? Sure? I mean you compare like a tripy four
- 26:56Speaker 2: year old to a ten year old. Ten year old
- 26:59Speaker 2: beat up on the four year old any day of
- 27:00Speaker 2: the week.
- 27:02Speaker 1: Well, we'll get to the snapshot in time thing. Because
- 27:04Speaker 1: I thought they meant overall, like I grew up to
- 27:07Speaker 1: be the smallest and weakest.
- 27:09Speaker 2: No, but yeah, you just touched on a huge problem
- 27:11Speaker 2: that we'll get you there.
- 27:12Speaker 1: Don't No, I didn't NeSSI put it in it in
- 27:15Speaker 1: my brain. If the oldest of the family reported being
- 27:20Speaker 1: the most anxious, then they said, oh, well, it's because
- 27:23Speaker 1: they had an experienced mother, and if it was the
- 27:27Speaker 1: middle it was because they were neglected. So they're like,
- 27:30Speaker 1: you can't do that.
- 27:31Speaker 2: That's not science, right exactly, And they pretty much definitively
- 27:35Speaker 2: removed birth order influencing personality as a field of psychology
- 27:40Speaker 2: like psychology turned its back on that, and that was
- 27:42Speaker 2: it for a dozen years essentially, maybe a little more.
- 27:47Speaker 2: But before their book, or Angston Ernst's book came out
- 27:51Speaker 2: back in the seventy I think actually nineteen seventy, there
- 27:55Speaker 2: was a psychologist named Frank Solaway. He was working on
- 27:59Speaker 2: his doctorate think at the time, and he had a
- 28:03Speaker 2: professor that that was into birth order as this is
- 28:06Speaker 2: again this is before the Swiss study of the Swiss
- 28:09Speaker 2: book came out and made Swiss cheese a birth order.
- 28:14Speaker 2: And the Soloway's professor said, you know what, Charles Darwin,
- 28:19Speaker 2: let's just talk about Darwin for a second. He said,
- 28:21Speaker 2: sit down, Soilhaway, sit down, I've been wanting to talk
- 28:23Speaker 2: to you about this. Charles Darwin came up with one
- 28:27Speaker 2: of the most radical theories that science has ever produced
- 28:32Speaker 2: in coming up with natural selection and evolution. Right, But
- 28:36Speaker 2: did you know that Darwin's mentor the person that had
- 28:40Speaker 2: the greatest influence on his work his entire career, a
- 28:44Speaker 2: geologist named Charles Lyle, did not accept that that we
- 28:49Speaker 2: have all from apes. Did not accept natural selection. He
- 28:51Speaker 2: could not accept it. And in fact, Lyle was in
- 28:56Speaker 2: quite a quite a pickle because he prized science and
- 28:58Speaker 2: reason and his protoce had just used science and reason
- 29:02Speaker 2: to show that humans are no different than animals, and
- 29:09Speaker 2: Lyle was like, no, reason is what separates us from animals.
- 29:12Speaker 2: So he had a really hard time accepting that, and
- 29:14Speaker 2: so Sos College professor pointed to Darwin being a later
- 29:19Speaker 2: born and having a much more ability to think freely
- 29:23Speaker 2: and Lyle being a firstborn and thinking much more conservatively
- 29:27Speaker 2: as the explanation to that very famous gulf between the two.
- 29:31Speaker 1: Yeah, which is a stretch for me, even though I
- 29:35Speaker 1: think there's a lot to birth order. That one is,
- 29:37Speaker 1: I don't know. It's a stretch. But Soloway it was like, interesting,
- 29:41Speaker 1: let me look into this a little more. I want
- 29:43Speaker 1: to see if this is a reasonable assumption or theory
- 29:47Speaker 1: at least. And he ended up writing a book in
- 29:49Speaker 1: nineteen ninety six called Born to Rebel colon Birth Order,
- 29:55Speaker 1: Family Dynamics, and Creative Lives, and he did his own
- 30:00Speaker 1: meta analysis of all of these studies that are out there,
- 30:03Speaker 1: and he basically went on to poo poo Oxton Ernst
- 30:08Speaker 1: and said Adler was right all along. There's a lot
- 30:12Speaker 1: of significance to birth order and how it ties to
- 30:15Speaker 1: your personality. And here's why I think this is true
- 30:19Speaker 1: because a child occupies a niche in a family, and
- 30:24Speaker 1: that niche is determined according to your birth order. So
- 30:28Speaker 1: we're calling a birth order, but what it really is
- 30:31Speaker 1: is a proxy for what The real things are behind this,
- 30:34Speaker 1: which is how big you are, what's your status in
- 30:38Speaker 1: that family, what is your power dynamic in that family,
- 30:41Speaker 1: what's the age difference and stuff.
- 30:43Speaker 2: Like that, right, and that those are the things that
- 30:45Speaker 2: really influence your personality. But they all are, at the
- 30:50Speaker 2: end of the day, tied into birth order. It's just
- 30:52Speaker 2: not birth order in and of itself, but the qualities
- 30:54Speaker 2: that come with birth order.
- 30:55Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, which seems like splitting hairs, but maybe no
- 30:58Speaker 1: one had split that hair yet.
- 31:00Speaker 2: I mean, it makes sense to me. It definitely removes
- 31:02Speaker 2: it from any kind of like astrological stuff, because birth
- 31:06Speaker 2: order if you're like, yeah, you're a middle child, so
- 31:08Speaker 2: you're all these things, not oh yeah you're smaller than
- 31:11Speaker 2: your older brother, so you have a you don't like
- 31:15Speaker 2: being touched kind of thing. I don't know. It makes sense.
- 31:19Speaker 2: It takes it and actually provides an explanation to it.
- 31:21Speaker 2: And by the way, I just want to point out,
- 31:23Speaker 2: get this, chuck. So he started this research in nineteen seventy,
- 31:26Speaker 2: release the book in nineteen ninety six, right smack dab
- 31:30Speaker 2: in the middle of that twenty five ish years of research,
- 31:34Speaker 2: that Swiss book came out. Can You imagine dedicating thirteen
- 31:37Speaker 2: years of research and then all of a sudden some
- 31:39Speaker 2: book comes along and completely disproves everything you've been working on.
- 31:43Speaker 1: Yeah.
- 31:44Speaker 2: But Frank's al always was the kind of be like, Nope,
- 31:46Speaker 2: they're wrong, I'm right, I'm going to keep going.
- 31:49Speaker 1: Yeah, And for him, family dynamics all came down to
- 31:54Speaker 1: a Darwinian power struggle basically between these siblings for affection
- 31:59Speaker 1: from their parents. So again, if you're first born, you're
- 32:03Speaker 1: gonna basically act as a surrogate parent to your younger siblings.
- 32:07Speaker 1: Not because you have some great desire to teach those kids,
- 32:10Speaker 1: but you're looking at mom and dad and saying, like,
- 32:12Speaker 1: see how much I'm helping, Like I'm helping be like
- 32:14Speaker 1: little mommy or little Daddy. It's why they respect authority,
- 32:18Speaker 1: it's why they're conscientious, and it's why they identify more
- 32:21Speaker 1: with parents. The younger kids they and again this says
- 32:25Speaker 1: lacks of physical strength. I guess presumably just because they're
- 32:28Speaker 1: younger in that snapshot in time, which we'll get to
- 32:31Speaker 1: don't spoil in, Chuck, but they have what he called
- 32:36Speaker 1: low power strategies. So still had strategies as far as
- 32:40Speaker 1: this power struggle, in the family, but more like, hey,
- 32:43Speaker 1: let me use humor or social intelligence to get their
- 32:46Speaker 1: affection instead of you know, like physical things.
- 32:50Speaker 2: They were the kids that were more likely to spend
- 32:52Speaker 2: their allowance on a bow tie that spins.
- 32:56Speaker 1: Do you ever have one of those?
- 32:57Speaker 2: No? I never did. I added like a little clip
- 33:02Speaker 2: on bow tie for Easter if I remember correctly.
- 33:05Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a thing. I know a couple of bow
- 33:07Speaker 1: tie guys.
- 33:08Speaker 2: I learned how to tie a bow tie for mine
- 33:10Speaker 2: and Yumi's wedding.
- 33:11Speaker 1: Actually, so you were one then yes? Are you like, nah,
- 33:17Speaker 1: just practice? Yeah. I can't pull off a bow tie.
- 33:22Speaker 1: It's not a good look for me.
- 33:23Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I'd like to see that. Let me be
- 33:25Speaker 2: the judge of that. Okay, all right, okay, well you
- 33:28Speaker 2: tie it for me. I yes, I will. I know
- 33:30Speaker 2: how to. I'm a little rusty, but I can get
- 33:32Speaker 2: it back.
- 33:32Speaker 1: Well, you know, you got to stand behind me and
- 33:34Speaker 1: wrap your arms around me and do it that way.
- 33:35Speaker 1: Of course, if you do it in front, it's like
- 33:38Speaker 1: it's weird.
- 33:38Speaker 2: And then afterwards we'll do that funny thing where it
- 33:40Speaker 2: looks like you have four arms and I'm hiding behind you,
- 33:43Speaker 2: and we'll do all sorts of weird stuff.
- 33:45Speaker 1: And then after that, I'll get behind you and teach
- 33:47Speaker 1: you how to swing a golf club.
- 33:48Speaker 2: Okay, fair enough, it's all in the.
- 33:51Speaker 1: Hips, all right. So from that power dynamic to wrap
- 33:55Speaker 1: it up and that power struggle, we also have the
- 33:57Speaker 1: middle children. And these are the ones again because you're
- 34:01Speaker 1: in the middle, you're more likely to cooperate, you're more
- 34:03Speaker 1: into diplomacy, and you're probably mediating fights between the oldest
- 34:08Speaker 1: and the youngest, which did not track in my family.
- 34:11Speaker 1: My sister and my brother and I didn't fight a lot,
- 34:13Speaker 1: but if there was sibling fighting going on, it was
- 34:16Speaker 1: usually me and my brother because we were closer in age.
- 34:18Speaker 1: My sister was six when I was born, so I
- 34:20Speaker 1: was her little baby boy, and so she and I
- 34:23Speaker 1: never had a lot of fights and stuff, gotcha.
- 34:28Speaker 2: So one of the other things that Soulo we spent
- 34:32Speaker 2: his time on was he basically did the same thing
- 34:34Speaker 2: Francis Galton did. He profiled a bunch of different people
- 34:38Speaker 2: to kind of support his point. I read that he
- 34:43Speaker 2: he basically created a database of sixty five hundred and
- 34:46Speaker 2: sixty six historical people who were meaning they were all dead,
- 34:52Speaker 2: who were involved in one hundred and twenty one different
- 34:54Speaker 2: political and scientific upheavals from the scientific or sorry, from
- 34:58Speaker 2: the French Revolution, Protestant Reformation, Darwin's theory of natural selection.
- 35:04Speaker 2: And then he looked at a bunch of different factors,
- 35:08Speaker 2: but one of those factors was birth order. And what
- 35:11Speaker 2: he found was I saw an interview with him. He
- 35:14Speaker 2: said that, yeah, there's a bunch of different stuff that
- 35:16Speaker 2: influence our personality, our behavior. I think he controlled for
- 35:19Speaker 2: two hundred and fifty six different ones like age, religion, class, education,
- 35:24Speaker 2: and he said, yes, some of those things influence our personality,
- 35:28Speaker 2: but he said nothing packs the wallop of birth order.
- 35:31Speaker 2: He basically said, it's birth order everybody.
- 35:34Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, And.
- 35:36Speaker 2: He gave some examples.
- 35:38Speaker 1: Right, well, yeah, I mean if you look if he
- 35:41Speaker 1: did sort of the same thing that others have done,
- 35:43Speaker 1: which is to point at famous people in history and say, well, see,
- 35:46Speaker 1: look at this person. They were the first born and
- 35:47Speaker 1: they did this. Look at King David, right, look at
- 35:50Speaker 1: King David. In this case, he said, look at Mussolini
- 35:55Speaker 1: and look at Stalin. I believe Stalin was not the firstborn,
- 35:59Speaker 1: but his siblings died in infancy, so he was sort
- 36:03Speaker 1: of de facto firstborn.
- 36:04Speaker 2: Yeah, they call it the psychological firstborn. That's the emphasis
- 36:07Speaker 2: they put on it.
- 36:08Speaker 1: Yeah. So he said, look at these people, they were
- 36:12Speaker 1: firstborns and they were monsters. And look at Marx and
- 36:16Speaker 1: Darwin and Gandhi and they were all later borns. And
- 36:20Speaker 1: you know, when you start breaking it down, though, and
- 36:22Speaker 1: you say, oh, what about like Isaac Newton or Einstein?
- 36:26Speaker 1: That goes against your idea because both of those guys
- 36:29Speaker 1: were firstborns, and it went against the common thinking that
- 36:32Speaker 1: the later borns were going to be the ones to
- 36:34Speaker 1: come up with these revolutionary thoughts.
- 36:36Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 36:37Speaker 1: And he said, oh yeah, but you know what, the
- 36:39Speaker 1: people that supported them were two to ten times more
- 36:42Speaker 1: likely to be later born's.
- 36:43Speaker 2: Right. So he did the opposite in those two cases
- 36:46Speaker 2: when he pointed to something like he said, Lincoln was
- 36:49Speaker 2: a second child and he had the revolutionary thinking of
- 36:53Speaker 2: ending slavery. Yeah, and that's an example of basically being reductivist,
- 36:58Speaker 2: Like he boiled down these huge historical machinations down to
- 37:02Speaker 2: one individual to point to prove his point. Right, Yeah,
- 37:06Speaker 2: Lincoln and in slavery and he was a second born.
- 37:09Speaker 2: And then he does the opposite with examples that don't
- 37:12Speaker 2: fit like you said. Einstein and Newton, well they were
- 37:15Speaker 2: first born, but their supporters were two to ten times
- 37:18Speaker 2: more likely to be later born. So now he takes
- 37:20Speaker 2: it from the individual and boils it back out to
- 37:24Speaker 2: a bunch of different people having to do with these
- 37:26Speaker 2: revolutions and thinking. It's pretty emblematic from what I've read
- 37:31Speaker 2: of his argument.
- 37:33Speaker 1: Yeah, and I love Dave rus who put this together.
- 37:36Speaker 1: He inserts little jokes here and there just for us,
- 37:40Speaker 1: but sometimes we like to bring them out on the show.
- 37:43Speaker 1: He wrote that ten times more likely and then put whatever,
- 37:46Speaker 1: pal right, it's good stuff.
- 37:50Speaker 2: Yeah, so Born to Rebel was a rebel. I've been
- 37:55Speaker 2: wanting to say that the whole time. Okay, it should
- 37:58Speaker 2: be elll e really if you think about it. But okay,
- 38:03Speaker 2: so it became, I think when a bestseller. It was
- 38:06Speaker 2: a really popular book despite being pretty scientific. I think
- 38:10Speaker 2: half of it was scientific annotations and bibliography. But I
- 38:15Speaker 2: believe he wrote it in like a way that you know,
- 38:18Speaker 2: the average person could could digest, and it really made
- 38:21Speaker 2: waves because again he comes along thirteen years after psychology
- 38:24Speaker 2: was like, okay, great, that's done. Birth order has nothing
- 38:26Speaker 2: to do with anything. He said, Nope, it's the most
- 38:29Speaker 2: important driver of personality everybody. So he was widely criticized
- 38:33Speaker 2: for it, including by another controversial thinker in psychology, Judith
- 38:38Speaker 2: rich Harris. And she was controversial, like I said, because
- 38:42Speaker 2: she was kind of tangential to the field. She was
- 38:46Speaker 2: kicked out of Harvard during while she was working on
- 38:50Speaker 2: her doctorate, and later on was awarded with a prestigious
- 38:54Speaker 2: award that was named after the director of the psychology
- 38:58Speaker 2: department who kicked her out, So she came full circle.
- 39:01Speaker 2: But she was kind of considered like an outside thinker.
- 39:03Speaker 2: But her whole jam was actually parents have like the
- 39:06Speaker 2: least influence on kids' genes and peers that really shape
- 39:10Speaker 2: people's individual personalities. And she basically said, no, Soloway is
- 39:15Speaker 2: just totally full of it and this doesn't hold water
- 39:17Speaker 2: at all.
- 39:18Speaker 1: Yeah, and she had her own sick burns. Yeah, that
- 39:21Speaker 1: I think was sicker than the earliest sickburn she said.
- 39:24Speaker 1: Quote it is never surprising when the originator of a
- 39:27Speaker 1: theory produces evidence that supports the theory. The real test
- 39:31Speaker 1: of the theory is whether other people, working independently of
- 39:35Speaker 1: the originator of the theory produce evidence that supports it
- 39:39Speaker 1: pretty good burn.
- 39:40Speaker 2: It is a great burn. So I say we take
- 39:43Speaker 2: our second break, because that basically puts sol Away away
- 39:46Speaker 2: for now. This is ninety six, and he got shouted
- 39:50Speaker 2: down typically, but his work definitely brought it back into
- 39:54Speaker 2: the popular mainstream, which is why still today you see
- 39:58Speaker 2: like parenting sites and psychology sites like referring to the
- 40:01Speaker 2: stuff as if it's true and real. So but yeah,
- 40:05Speaker 2: I say we move on, and we use an ad
- 40:08Speaker 2: break as a transition for that.
- 40:10Speaker 1: Let's do it and shot shot.
- 40:34Speaker 2: Okay, So slow Away really roughle a lot of feathers,
- 40:38Speaker 2: And it took another decade or two before people finally
- 40:40Speaker 2: like got around to conducting about as legitimate a meta
- 40:46Speaker 2: analysis of the previous studies that you could possibly do,
- 40:50Speaker 2: or they compiled their own studies based on really large
- 40:55Speaker 2: sample sizes. Because if birth order is a thing, and
- 40:59Speaker 2: birth order applies to everybody, including only children, then if
- 41:04Speaker 2: you get a bunch of people together, birth order is
- 41:06Speaker 2: going to show up in some way, shape or form,
- 41:08Speaker 2: because it's there among everybody. It's not like some people
- 41:11Speaker 2: have some sort of birth order. Everybody who's ever born
- 41:14Speaker 2: has some sort of ranking, even only children. And yet
- 41:18Speaker 2: when you look at really good data using really good methodology,
- 41:22Speaker 2: it just does not come to the surface.
- 41:25Speaker 1: That's right. This one was very large in twenty fifteen.
- 41:28Speaker 1: It looked at data from three hundred and seventy seven
- 41:32Speaker 1: thousand high school students in the United States. Then there
- 41:36Speaker 1: was another study in the same year that analyzed data
- 41:39Speaker 1: from about twenty thousand students in Europe and Germany in
- 41:43Speaker 1: the US as well and UK. And there were a
- 41:46Speaker 1: couple of psychologists, Rodika Damien and Brent W. Roberts from
- 41:51Speaker 1: the Fighting Aliini of the University of Illinois. I'm not
- 41:55Speaker 1: sure what an Aliini is.
- 41:56Speaker 2: It's an Illinoianite, is it all right?
- 42:01Speaker 1: And that sounds about right? Okay, But they fight, I
- 42:04Speaker 1: know that, right, They're always fun. But they they isolated
- 42:10Speaker 1: that they tried to do, you know, controls for everything
- 42:12Speaker 1: as well, and they looked at everything, which included of course,
- 42:16Speaker 1: birth order and then you know, the sex of the
- 42:20Speaker 1: of the kid, and the number of siblings, size, socio
- 42:23Speaker 1: economics of it all, and all this stuff. And they
- 42:26Speaker 1: basically said, this is the largest study that we've ever done,
- 42:29Speaker 1: the most sophisticated of its kind, and there is little
- 42:32Speaker 1: to no functional relation between birth order and personality like
- 42:36Speaker 1: full stop.
- 42:37Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, full stop is right. And those same psychologists,
- 42:40Speaker 2: Damien and Roberts, they wrote something they wrote basically like
- 42:43Speaker 2: an editorial in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
- 42:47Speaker 2: which also published their study of the three hundred and
- 42:49Speaker 2: seventy seven thousand high school students. That is such a
- 42:52Speaker 2: huge sample size, and they basically said in this editorial letter,
- 42:57Speaker 2: here are all the problems from the previous study. There's
- 43:01Speaker 2: just flaws galore. And they basically divided the types of
- 43:05Speaker 2: studies for examining birth order into two different categories. There
- 43:09Speaker 2: was the between family study design and the within family
- 43:12Speaker 2: study design. And the between family study design said it
- 43:15Speaker 2: just looked at a bunch of people who weren't related
- 43:17Speaker 2: and then pulled them about their birth order and then
- 43:20Speaker 2: looked at their individual personality traits. Within family design looked
- 43:24Speaker 2: at the actual members of a single family or multiple
- 43:27Speaker 2: single families, and then examined the personality traits based on
- 43:30Speaker 2: their birth order in relation to the other members of
- 43:34Speaker 2: their family, their sibship.
- 43:36Speaker 1: Yeah, and it seemed to hold a lot more water
- 43:39Speaker 1: when you just looked at the family designs within a
- 43:43Speaker 1: family and not between a bunch of these different families.
- 43:46Speaker 1: Like this is when it started to make sense a
- 43:49Speaker 1: little more for me. But at the same time, like,
- 43:54Speaker 1: I don't feel it's too horoscopy to see that there's
- 43:56Speaker 1: a lot of correlation between some of these traits, right,
- 43:59Speaker 1: but the science doesn't hold up then it's just anecdotal basically.
- 44:03Speaker 2: Well, what they were saying was so like, if you're
- 44:05Speaker 2: looking at a between family design, you're not taking into
- 44:08Speaker 2: account typically the number of siblings total. You're just taking
- 44:13Speaker 2: account the birth order. And that they're saying that if
- 44:16Speaker 2: you look at something like the number of firstborns versus
- 44:20Speaker 2: later borns, there's more later borns than firstborn so there's
- 44:23Speaker 2: only one firstborn in a family, but there can be
- 44:25Speaker 2: multiple later borns, right, And that firstborns typically are smarter,
- 44:30Speaker 2: they have a higher IQ. That will get to in
- 44:33Speaker 2: a second is actually true, and that a lot of
- 44:35Speaker 2: it has to do with them coming from families of
- 44:38Speaker 2: high socioeconomic status, and that that's not controlled for. If
- 44:42Speaker 2: you don't control for the SIB ship size, then your
- 44:45Speaker 2: methodology is just crud. That was just one of multiple
- 44:50Speaker 2: problems they had with it.
- 44:52Speaker 1: Yeah, and if you're the what if you're from a
- 44:54Speaker 1: large Catholic family of like eight kids and you're seven,
- 44:59Speaker 1: six eight or five of eight, Like, does all this
- 45:03Speaker 1: stuff just go out the door at that point?
- 45:05Speaker 2: If birth order is is true, then no, it wouldn't
- 45:10Speaker 2: like there you would have multiples in the middle, like
- 45:12Speaker 2: sharing similar traits. I would guess, right, But that's not
- 45:16Speaker 2: the case. And then they did another little victory lap
- 45:19Speaker 2: and they basically said, oh, there's a couple of other
- 45:21Speaker 2: things that are sacred cows in the field of birth
- 45:24Speaker 2: order and personality. One is that it's it's it differs
- 45:28Speaker 2: by gender, that birth order personality traits show up way
- 45:31Speaker 2: more in males than females. And they were like, no,
- 45:34Speaker 2: that's not true at all. We study that as part
- 45:37Speaker 2: of this meta analysis. Nope, it's not correct. The other
- 45:40Speaker 2: one is that, okay, birth order really starts to get
- 45:43Speaker 2: diluted when you look at the full range of siblings
- 45:47Speaker 2: in a family, especially if there's you know, a decade
- 45:51Speaker 2: or more in between the oldest and the youngest, because
- 45:55Speaker 2: really birth order only shows up between siblings that are
- 45:57Speaker 2: separated by no more than five years. So it gets
- 46:00Speaker 2: I louted if you'l like at the whole thing, and
- 46:01Speaker 2: they said, nope, we shrunk everything down to just five
- 46:04Speaker 2: year gaps between siblings tops, and it still did not
- 46:08Speaker 2: show up. So they just absolutely trounced down the theory
- 46:12Speaker 2: in every single way they could, using the best data
- 46:14Speaker 2: in the best methodology, and they said, guys, it just
- 46:18Speaker 2: it's not real. Can we please stop talking about this?
- 46:23Speaker 1: Yeah, and someone else is going to come along because
- 46:26Speaker 1: people can't stop talking about and researching berth On.
- 46:30Speaker 2: It's true, Yeah, if we look for it.
- 46:32Speaker 1: It really is. Because as I was doing this, I
- 46:34Speaker 1: was sort of into thinking about if I felt this
- 46:36Speaker 1: is true or not, or what about my family? And
- 46:38Speaker 1: then I was like, who cares? H And that's I
- 46:41Speaker 1: guess why. It's pop psychology to a certain degree. I mean,
- 46:45Speaker 1: these findings are sort of interesting, I guess, But what's
- 46:49Speaker 1: the end game as far as what are we really learning,
- 46:53Speaker 1: as far as like what makes it us better families
- 46:56Speaker 1: or better as a as a human race? Like probably nothing.
- 47:00Speaker 2: Well to me, it's an example of that that trait
- 47:05Speaker 2: of twentieth century science that's like a compulsion to find
- 47:10Speaker 2: the one reason that something happens, and this is a
- 47:13Speaker 2: great example of that. But it's also again I think
- 47:16Speaker 2: it's because we're all like confronted one way or another
- 47:19Speaker 2: with birth order and made our own observation. So it's
- 47:22Speaker 2: it's just kind of almost a folk psychology, you know.
- 47:26Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree. So we were going to talk about
- 47:29Speaker 1: IQ because it is true that when you look at
- 47:33Speaker 1: the data in the numbers that firstborn's score highest on
- 47:39Speaker 1: IQ tests. It's not a lot. What I found was
- 47:43Speaker 1: like a point, so it's not some huge difference on average.
- 47:47Speaker 2: I don't think it's not a shameful difference.
- 47:49Speaker 1: It's not a shameful difference, but it was there, and
- 47:52Speaker 1: there's a guide that has a really interesting take on
- 47:55Speaker 1: all this. As his name was James, I don't know
- 47:59Speaker 1: how you would say it. Junk is the only way
- 48:01Speaker 1: I can say it.
- 48:02Speaker 2: Yeah, that's what people call him in the bars, probably.
- 48:07Speaker 1: Z A j O N c ze yunk oh XEONK.
- 48:11Speaker 2: I'm going with James ze yunk, right, and the whole
- 48:14Speaker 2: the whole name flows like teeny others. James Zyunk is.
- 48:19Speaker 1: The youngster yea. So uh he he looked at SAT scores.
- 48:24Speaker 1: I found this pretty interesting. Actually, he started in nineteen
- 48:27Speaker 1: sixty seven, when there was a big drop in verbal
- 48:30Speaker 1: SAT scores that went on for about ten years, and
- 48:34Speaker 1: of course people at the time were saying, oh, it's
- 48:36Speaker 1: because of this, it's because of that, it's because these children.
- 48:38Speaker 1: These days, our society is just going down the drain.
- 48:42Speaker 1: People are getting dumber. But later than that, about ten
- 48:45Speaker 1: years later, in seventy six, he said, here's what I predict.
- 48:48Speaker 1: SAT scores are going to continue to go down for
- 48:51Speaker 1: about four more years, and then in nineteen eighty they're
- 48:54Speaker 1: going to start to go up again. And this is why, everybody,
- 48:58Speaker 1: because there was a baby boom in our and there
- 49:01Speaker 1: were a lot of firstborn children because of that baby
- 49:04Speaker 1: boom that were born in nineteen forty nine, so that
- 49:07Speaker 1: means they would be taking the SAT in about nineteen
- 49:10Speaker 1: sixty seven. That's when scores peaked because firstborns, as we
- 49:13Speaker 1: all know, are smarter. And then as each successive child
- 49:17Speaker 1: is born from sixty seven on, they're not going to
- 49:20Speaker 1: be as smart, and so these SAT scores are going
- 49:23Speaker 1: to go down. But once we hit nineteen eighty, at
- 49:26Speaker 1: all resets, because that baby boom stopped in sixty two,
- 49:30Speaker 1: and if you were born in sixty two, you're going
- 49:32Speaker 1: to take the SAT in nineteen eighty, So these scores
- 49:34Speaker 1: are going to go back up, and they did.
- 49:37Speaker 2: Yeah, because between nineteen forty nine and nineteen sixty two
- 49:40Speaker 2: there was it was much likelier that you were a
- 49:43Speaker 2: second born than a first born compared to the beginning
- 49:46Speaker 2: of the baby boom. So he basically just dropped the
- 49:49Speaker 2: mic right there because it turned out that that's exactly
- 49:51Speaker 2: what happened, Like his prediction came true. And what he
- 49:54Speaker 2: showed was like, yep, birth order has to do with IQ.
- 49:58Speaker 2: It's just as simple as that. It was later followed
- 49:59Speaker 2: up or supported by a study from the Netherlands of
- 50:02Speaker 2: four hundred thousand military recruits. They found the same thing
- 50:06Speaker 2: with IQ score. And remember the SAT test used to
- 50:09Speaker 2: test your IQ. And so what did I come up with? Zionk? Yeah, sure,
- 50:16Speaker 2: James Zionk. He had a pretty neat theory or an
- 50:19Speaker 2: explanation or hypothesis of why that would be true. And
- 50:23Speaker 2: he said that it was based on what we talked
- 50:25Speaker 2: about earlier, that if you're an older sibling, even like
- 50:27Speaker 2: a second born sibling, as long as you're not the baby,
- 50:31Speaker 2: you have the ability or you have the opportunity I
- 50:34Speaker 2: mean to teach somebody else and to teach stuff. You
- 50:37Speaker 2: have to know stuff. You have to be paying attention,
- 50:39Speaker 2: you have to be aware, you have to be absorbing information,
- 50:42Speaker 2: and that you have less and less of an opportunity
- 50:45Speaker 2: to teach as more and more kids are born, because
- 50:48Speaker 2: you're sharing that function with other second or later born kids,
- 50:52Speaker 2: and then if you're the baby, you have no opportunity
- 50:54Speaker 2: to teach. So you're just the dumbest of the bunch essentially,
- 50:56Speaker 2: at least as far as Xiank's theory went, and again
- 51:00Speaker 2: it's backed up by SAT and IQ scores. But thankfully
- 51:03Speaker 2: you're saying that it's not that ridiculous of a difference
- 51:05Speaker 2: between firstborn and last born.
- 51:08Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that teaching function carries a little weight.
- 51:12Speaker 2: Definitely, it makes sense at least.
- 51:13Speaker 1: Yeah, it makes sense. A lot of this makes it.
- 51:15Speaker 2: But if there was any warning from this entire episode,
- 51:18Speaker 2: it's that just because it makes sense doesn't mean it's correct.
- 51:21Speaker 1: Exactly, because we mentioned this a few times, put that
- 51:25Speaker 1: pin in it, We're going to take that pin out
- 51:27Speaker 1: because a very sort of keen thing to be aware
- 51:31Speaker 1: of with all of this is when they do these studies,
- 51:33Speaker 1: you are looking at a point in time, a snapshot
- 51:36Speaker 1: in time of when someone does this study, it might
- 51:39Speaker 1: be when the siblings are eighteen, fourteen, and nine. You
- 51:44Speaker 1: do that same study with that same family when you
- 51:47Speaker 1: know ten years later, and they might you might get
- 51:50Speaker 1: wildly different results on who these people are and what
- 51:52Speaker 1: their personality is like. So it's you know, you really
- 51:56Speaker 1: have there's so many things to account for. I don't
- 51:58Speaker 1: know that you can draw some sweet conclusion, like everyone
- 52:01Speaker 1: keeps desperately trying to do right.
- 52:03Speaker 2: Yeah, and it makes sense too, because I mean it's
- 52:05Speaker 2: called the perfect age compound if you're looking at just
- 52:07Speaker 2: a snapshot in time. Of course, the eighteen year old
- 52:09Speaker 2: oldest born is going to be more conscientious than the
- 52:12Speaker 2: nine year old baby of the family. That's just how
- 52:14Speaker 2: it works. That has to do with growing up right,
- 52:17Speaker 2: not where you were born, in your sibship, your position.
- 52:21Speaker 2: And then also, of course the nine year old's going
- 52:23Speaker 2: to be more likely to wander off into the woods
- 52:25Speaker 2: and have fun with their friends than the eighteen year old.
- 52:28Speaker 2: That's just part of being young. So that definitely explains
- 52:31Speaker 2: it quite a bit to me if you ask me.
- 52:33Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think where I end up is like
- 52:36Speaker 1: I think there is a lot to birth order and
- 52:38Speaker 1: I think it's bound to have an effect on who
- 52:41Speaker 1: you turn out to be, along with a lot of
- 52:44Speaker 1: other factors in your life. But I think it's one
- 52:46Speaker 1: of them.
- 52:46Speaker 2: Okay, well there you go. Well Chuck said he thinks
- 52:50Speaker 2: it's one of them, which of course triggers listener me.
- 52:56Speaker 1: I'm going to call this a follow up on France's Kelsey,
- 53:00Speaker 1: which I thought was pretty cool. We did a shorty
- 53:02Speaker 1: recently on Francis Kelsey, one of the heroes of the FDA,
- 53:07Speaker 1: and we got a letter from Katie entitled, my sister's
- 53:11Speaker 1: hero was Francis Kelly. Dearest Josh, Chuck, Jerry, and Dave's spirit.
- 53:17Speaker 1: David appreciates that. Thank you. You guys have no idea
- 53:22Speaker 1: how thrilled I was to listen to today's short stuff
- 53:24Speaker 1: about Francis Kelsey. This woman is my sister Sarah's hero.
- 53:28Speaker 1: Like Sarah put a portrait of doctor Kelsey in her
- 53:31Speaker 1: child's nursery. Hero, my sister Sarah has been telling us
- 53:35Speaker 1: for years about the important contribution that Kelsey made to
- 53:38Speaker 1: public health and women's health as a whole, but specifically
- 53:42Speaker 1: to maternal, infant, child, and adolescent health. And that sounds
- 53:47Speaker 1: after I read this, I was like, oh man, I
- 53:48Speaker 1: wish we could have done a full thing on Francis Kelsey.
- 53:51Speaker 1: Sarah works tirelessly in adolescent sexual health despite all the
- 53:54Speaker 1: fire public health has been under for the past few years.
- 53:57Speaker 1: Her devotion to protecting the health of teens, regardless of
- 54:00Speaker 1: their gender, sexual orientation, or citizen status makes me proud
- 54:04Speaker 1: to be her sister. I'm so happy at Public Servant
- 54:07Speaker 1: was highlighted on your show. Thanks from the bottom of
- 54:10Speaker 1: my heart for sharing the story so more will know
- 54:14Speaker 1: about doctor Kelsey's works. From a long time listener, Katie. Katie,
- 54:19Speaker 1: this is great and Sarah love that you're doing this
- 54:22Speaker 1: good work. It's amazing and I'm curious about your birth
- 54:26Speaker 1: order now.
- 54:26Speaker 2: Very nice. That was a great email, Katie. That was
- 54:29Speaker 2: a very sweet thing to send us, So thank you
- 54:31Speaker 2: for it. And hats off to YouTube Sarah. Like Chuck said,
- 54:35Speaker 2: and if you want to look up to your older
- 54:37Speaker 2: sibling or younger sibling or whatever, we'd love to hear that.
- 54:40Speaker 2: You can send it to us in an email to
- 54:42Speaker 2: Stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
- 54:48Speaker 3: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
- 54:51Speaker 3: more podcasts my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts,
- 54:55Speaker 3: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.