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Birth Order Research Paper

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Effects of Birth Order
How does one’s order in the family affect their personality? "The one thing you can bet your paycheck on is that the first-born and second-born in any given family are going to be different," says Dr. Kevin Leman, a psychologist who has studied birth order since 1967 and author of The Birth Order Book: Why You Are the Way You Are (Revell). How can two people with the same genes be on opposite ends of the personality spectrum? Birth order. Psychologists such as Leman believe that this is the truth; one’s personality and how one is treated by their family relates to the order in which they were born. Birth order definitely makes a difference in one’s personality. Beginning with the first-born child, parents are presented …show more content…

They have an idea of the things that work; but this child will be completely different. Therapist Meri Wallace says, "The middle child often feels left out and a sense of, Well, I'm not the oldest. I'm not the youngest. Who am I?"(Parents). This may cause them to seek attention with peers and reject parents. “In general, middle children tend to possess the characteristics of people-pleasers, are somewhat rebellious, thrive on friendships, have a large social circle, and are peacemakers”(Parents). Middle children are commonly rebels and not as high of achievers as the first child is. However, Dr. Leman says, "Middle children are the toughest to pin down because they do play off their older sibling"(Parents). There are always factors that will determine who one’s child is. Gender and age distance between the first child play a role in the characteristics also. “If the firstborn child is a boy and the middle child is a girl, she may possess first born characteristics because although she is technically second-born, she is also the firstborn female”(Parents). The middle child’s strength is being flexible and social. They compromise. The characteristics of middle children are not lost as they grow up. “Common career fields for middle children include public service, caretaking, education, construction, and law enforcement”(Best Psychology Degrees). “Famous middle children include: John F Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., Princess Diana, and Cindy Crawford”(Best Psychology

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Being the younger sibling makes you less powerful, but younger siblings gain universal knowledge from having an older sibling and develop what is known as the theory of mind. Later-born are aware, know how to distinguish things apart and have an assumption in people motives. The first and the last born have distinct traits, leaving the middle traits difficult to understand. Firstborn temperaments are conscientiousness and agreeableness. Later-born are outrageous, risk takers and

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William's believes in Utilitarianism, and defines it as “ the doctrine that actions are right if they are useful of for the benefit of a majority”. This applies to the example he used when talking about the indians and Jim. He used this situation which stated that Jim had to kill one indian, and get to mark the occasion, and the other indians will be let off; Or he refuses, and there will be no special occasion, and Pedro will kill them all. (Williams, p. ) Williams also argues against the utilitarianism theory, by saying that it conflicts with human nature.

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Dr. Rettew connects to class discussions and readings on shared and unshared environmental influences, evocative gene environment correlation, temperament, and the goodness-of-fit. Twins that with unshared environmental influences, such as different placentas, could adapt different temperaments (Berk, 2009). Also, twins that have been adopted into separate families could have different personality traits because they lived in completely different environments their whole life, even if they shared environmental influences of the same placenta (Berk, 2009). With an evocative gene environment correlation, a child’s genotype could draw in a certain type of environment, such as babies who appear more attractive will receive more attention (Berk, 2009). The type of attention a child gets could affect its temperament.

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Is it possible for strangers to have similarities? Every single person shares a similar experience with another person, but it is not always the same. In the novel The Seamstress, Sara Tuvel, a young Jewish girl who has lived through the holocaust, tries to conquer the struggles in her life. Although I never lived through anything like the holocaust I can relate to her in some ways. Sara and I share similarities in that we were both caretakers and have experienced discrimination, however, Sara is more assertive while I am more introverted.

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Hartshorne briefly read over several articles and book. Both did their own research but got nowhere. This tells me that the whole idea about birth order affecting how we think and act is hard to grasp. These two very intelligent men have the same troubles as the average human being on trying to understand it. I would agree with Stewart’s theory of there not being a significant persuasion by the order of birth to act and think the way we do.

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In our life, we often have experiences that teach us how and what we want to be like when we grow up. Everyone has ups and downs from time to time that make one want to stop and other times make one want to run while individually they feel free. The Garden Story by Katherine Mansfield and The First Born Son by Ernest Buckler both show how parental pressure, social pressure, and family pressure around an individual can influence the way one will treat others. Once in a while it is an advantage when they want to change the world to make it better for others, but oftentimes it is for the worse because they personally accept the problems they have and never trying to fix them. Both stories have parental influences that want them to stay as they are, tradition influences that professions stay in the family, and they are always compared to the better child that is more like by parents.

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I can agree because my son is the only child from me. He does have other siblings, but they live far away. As my son grow up he got anything that he wanted and how that he is five and I’m not getting everything that he wants I have made a monster out of him. The reasoning being he is the only child and doesn't want him to want for anything I try my best to get it. Now that he is older and I tell him no he can’t have something he will through fits to the point he embarrasses me.

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The nature vs. nurture debate centers on whether human behaviour and personality are inherited (nature) or acquired (nurture); in other words, whether a person’s environment or a person’s genetic inheritance determines their behaviour and personality. Goldsmith and Harman (1994) adopt a neutral position, in which both nature and nurture influence people, stating that they “believe that the fundamental issue concerns the interplay between characteristics of the individual and of the relationship” (54). Goldsmith and Harman discuss temperament and attachment for infant, with temperament being linked to the nature side of the debate and attachment being linked with the nurture side; as a result, the infant’s temperament influences the attachment bond between the infant and the mother, but the attachment bond influences the temperament of the child as well. Therefore, both nature and nurture interact with each other to produce people’s behaviour (Harman et al. 54). Andersen and Berk (1998) take on the nurture perspective, while Leary (1999) claims that nature is the determining factor of a person’s personality.

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Nurture can change how you act, and the way you look at things. Nurture has a bigger role in personality than nature. I still have to consider that they both have a role in personality. Many identical twins are different. Personality can change from when you were born.

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Children differ in cognitive , social, physical and emotional development pattern. They may differ in response for the same objet or play or affection or people. Some always appear to be active and happy and other appear to be dull and unhappy. It is found that some children are easier to like. To help all kinds of children, it is required to understand the sequence of development pattern.

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The characteristics that Adler attributed to people according to their birth order are as follows: the firstborn children receive a lot of attention from their parents, but then they will sadly suffer the dethrone by their siblings, whom they will overprotect; they are prone to further problems due to the loss of prior privileges and to the supposed responsibility for taking care of their siblings. Middleborn children neither lived the dethrone nor were consented, although it is common that they feel out of place or become rebellious. The youngest children are aiming to being arrogant, consented and dependent on others because their siblings have always helped them, so they will have greater difficulty adapting to adult life. Only children never lose their supremacy; they are independent, self-centered and have no problem on being alone, but they find hard to share and compete with others. Finally, the twins; the one who is born first is usually the dominant; they are confident because of their closeness, but they find it difficult to be alone and have problems when they separate.

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I am a middle child, yet I am not the yelling, screaming, dramatic kid who strives to get others’ attention. I am probably the only middle child in the world who doesn’t hunger for the spotlight to shine on them as they act in idiotic ways to gain scraps of validation. I remember the very day that I became a middle child. Up to my sixth year I lived as the youngest child, bathing in the attention of my father.

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It has been a long time since the debate about supremacy of nature and nurture has found its way to the spot as one of the highly disputed questions. Nevertheless, this debate started to be looked from scientific point of view starting from 19th century only. Just recently, psychology has developed as an independent scientific discipline. This explains to us the significance and fundamentalism of the nature-nurture controversy. The main purpose of this polemic was to answer questions like “Why people from the same environment have different characters?”

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