The proposed research will use the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire in the measurement of personality among a group of 200 students from the University of North Carolina. The purpose of the study will be to test the validity of the argument that birth order influences the development of personality and behavior in adulthood as proposed in existing studies. The researcher will adopt a cross-sectional survey design in researching the identified relationship. The design is a qualitative methodology that will involve the completion of a series of questionnaires. The research will involve testing of four hypotheses drawn from literature on the relationship between the order of birth and adult personality. The findings of the research suggest that indeed, birth order had an effect on the development of personality and behavior later in life. However, the study does not give clear results on the contributions of gender to the observed trend, which calls for further investigation.
Introduction
Background Information
Behavioral psychologists have been on the forefront in suggesting the connection between order of birth among children and their behavior in adulthood. For instance, Alfred Alder was among the first researchers to use the order of birth in the prediction of the behavior of persons (Rohrer, Egloff, & Schmukle, 2015). In his study, Adler posited that the eldest children in families formed the largest proportion of what he called ‘problem children.’ He also believed that the first-born children resent leadership and resent authority of their siblings later in life. The findings further suggested that the youngest children in the family are ‘spoilt.’ The researcher noted that this category of children represent those who cannot decide on strong ambitions since they always wish to excel in each element of their lives (Grinberg, 2015). The same study found that children who live as the only children draw their rivalry from their fathers since they always compete for attention from their mother. For this reason, only children wish to be the centers of attention at all times. Nevertheless, it should be noted that Adler’s findings are aged and that they have been subjected to substantial scrutiny in the recent years.
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For instance, Ernst & Angst (1983) (cited in Paulhus, Trapnell, & Chen, 1999) were the first to refute the perspective of birth order being related to personality. As much as they agreed with the some elements of the research, the two authors refused to buy the idea that birth order had connections with the behaviors of people in their adulthood. Their idea resulted in one of the pioneering researchers in the, Sulloway (1996), publishing his findings that seemed to support what Adler had proposed. Specifically, he reaffirmed idea that personalities of individuals differed a great deal across the order of births. However, he sought to argue that the emergence of the personalities was not because of the differences in parental treatment of the children, as it was thought conventionally. Instead, the new findings suggested that the behaviors resulted from the effects of sibling rivalry for their family niches.
Because the first-borns have the first choices of niches, they strive to please their parents through the conventional fashion of being successful in education and attempting to show responsibility. However, the arrival of other siblings in the family means that the first-borns have to cope with the threats that the new members would pose to their hierarchy in the sibling status. For this reason, as Stauffer (2003) argues, the resulting adult behavior is conservative and consecutions. The later-borns in the family realize that they have the responsibility of resisting the higher status of the first-borns, which cause them to seek chances for distinguishing themselves before their parents. Consequently, this group of children ends up developing empathic personalities in adulthood, which is why researchers refer to them as ‘rebel children’ (Sulloway, 1996).
Gap in Literature
Previous studies appear to have focused much on the relationship between birth orders and the development of personality traits in adulthood. However, only little has been done on the variables being studied to control the effect of gender on the findings. For this case, it is needful to add to the body of research concerning the contribution of gender to the development of behavior because of the modifying effects of the order of birth.
Current Research
With existing studies suggesting the possibilities of the effect of birth orders on the development of personality and behavior in adulthood, the objective of the proposed research will be to research the validity of the arguments depicted in extant literature. The proposed research will utilize the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire in the assessment of personality. In this case, it would be critical determining the validity of the relationships proposed in literature. The researcher will also analyze gender with each of the variables of the personality questionnaire.
The Proposed Research Question
The proposed research will seek to study the relationship between the order of birth and the development of character traits among children of the same family. In addition, the study will seek to establish whether gender is a moderating factor on the development of such traits in adulthood.
Research Hypotheses
The research will test the following hypotheses:
The findings of the study will reveal the existence of a significant variation between the categories of birth order according to personality subscales. In this case, some personality types will be related significantly with the different orders of births of the respondents.
The outcomes of the research will reveal the existence of variations between the birth order groups according to empathy. The researcher predicts that first-born children will have lower empathy levels compared to the later-borns in the families.
The study will identify significant variations between the orders of birth of the respondents according to the need for achievement. In this case, the researcher hypothesizes that first-born respondents will have higher needs for achievement compared to their siblings.
The research will reveal a statistical significance between achievement and perceived academic performance among the respondents recruited for the study.
Methodology
Design
The proposed research will adopt a cross-sectional survey design. Existing literature suggests that this type of research is a qualitative one. The research will entail the identified respondents filling questionnaires that would be useful for the survey within between ten and fifteen minutes of their class time. The fact that psychology students would be having information on the hypotheses being researched means that it would be plausible for the researcher to avoid this category of respondents because of the possibilities of them making the findings biased. The predictor variables for the study will be orders of birth of each of the participants and their personalities.
Participants
The researcher will recruit 200 respondents from the University of North Carolina who would be required to complete the questionnaires supplied to them for data collection. Of the 200 respondents, the researcher will strive to ensure gender equality through the attainment of a 50:50 gender ratio. The respondents included in this study will not have knowledge of the proposed hypotheses, which suggests that they would belong to other departments expect psychology. The respondents will also be recruited to the study following their informed consent and none of them would be forced to participate.
Material
The researcher shall compile three questionnaires into a booklet and administer them to the participants of the research. The cover pages of the questionnaire booklets will have instructions related to the completion of the survey and the terms defining the anonymity of the respondents, including the option of the withdrawal of unwilling participants as indicated in appendix 1. The three questionnaires utilized for the study included the Need for Achievement, Multi-Dimensional Model of Emotional Empathy and the short form of the revised Eysenck Personality Questionnaires (see appendices 2, 3, and 4 respectively). The research will also use the SPSS software for analysis of the relationships among the variables studied.
Procedure
At first, the collection of data will be begin through conducting lecturers of the specific classes to which respondents belong requesting for some time of their classes for the administration of the questionnaires. Following the obtainment of such consent, the researcher will then administer the questionnaires personally to the respondents and they will be expected to take between ten and fifteen minutes. The participants would then be required to return the completed questionnaires to the researcher as soon as they finish the process. Before feeling the questionnaires, the researcher will read the instructions to the respondents and indicate that anonymity nature of the research. They will then emphasize the need for quick and honest responses. The researcher will also emphasize the need for the respondents to exercise full autonomy, which is they would required to participate only when they feel willing to so.
The collected data will then be organized and analyzed using the SPSS software to determine the relationships among the studied variables to test the hypotheses formed. The researcher will code all the data for inferential and descriptive analysis using the SPSS software. The descriptive information related to the study, such as standard deviations and means will be established. In addition, the Cronbach alpha will be determined for the examination of the reliability of the used scales. The correlations among the chosen scales will then be performed afterwards for the examination of the relationships among the variables being studied.
Results and Implications for Practice and Research
As the hypotheses tested during the research suggest, the findings of the study are likely to establish a significant relationship between birth orders among families and the development of personality in adulthood for the groups of respondents studied. This findings would be in line with what extant studies, such as Aspinwall (2006), suggest of the development of behavior according to order of birth in the family. In addition, the findings would be in line with the confluence model that describes the development of intellectual ability proposed in (Sulloway, 1996). The success of the findings will draw from the fact that the researcher shall employ a powerful methodology in the measurement of the correlations among the different variables. However, the effect of gender on the development of the identified trend might remain unclear for the fact that the sample size used in the study might be too small to generalize the findings.
The discoveries from the proposed research would provide remarkable influence on education. In this case, teachers and other practitioners in the field of behavioral psychology might want to consider that the place of a child in the family might affect their needs for academic performance and excellence from their young ages (Sulloway, 2001). The findings would also influence the family setting. For instance, they would be useful in informing parents on the development of their children’s behavior and inform them that as much as they may provide the same conditions to their children, each one of them would be distinct from the rest because of their order of birth. The research implications would also be useful to the families during circumstances that would require handling of the cases of rebellion that seem to be associated with the adolescent stage. The findings of the research would also be handy in contributing to the current pool of knowledge that is critical to behavioral psychologists within the birth order area. The US would benefit a great deal since the American Dream is founded on the family as the central element. For this reason, it would be useful in attracting support for funding to advance the study to yield results with better effects on the family institution in the US.
References
Aspinwall, C. (2006, Nov 05). Shaking the family tree: Does birth order determine an individual's personality traits? McClatchy - Tribune Business News Retrieved from https://search.proquest.com/docview/463181923?accountid=45049
Grinberg, A. (2015). The effect of birth order on occupational choice. Atlantic Economic Journal, 43 (4), 463-476. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11293-015-9474-2
Paulhus, D. L., Trapnell, P. D., & Chen, D. (1999). Birth order effects on personality and achievement within families. Psychological Science , 10 (6), 482-488.
Rohrer, J. M., Egloff, B., & Schmukle, S. C. (2015). Examining the effects of birth order on personality. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , 112 (46), 14224-14229.
Stauffer, J. M. (2003). An investigation into the effects of birth order, sex, and personality on the likelihood of engaging in unethical behavior (Order No. 3096338). Available from ABI/INFORM Collection. (305305688). Retrieved from https://search.proquest.com/docview/305305688?accountid=45049
Sulloway, F. (1996). Born to rebel . New York: Pantheon.
Sulloway, F. J. (2001). Birth order, sibling competition, and human behavior. In Conceptual challenges in evolutionary psychology (pp. 39-83). Springer, Dordrecht.
