Sibling Rivalry: How Birth Order Affects Your Personality

Jan 22, 2025

Sibling Rivalry: How Birth Order Affects Your Personality is an IELTS Reading Answers which contains 14 questions and needs to be completed within 20 minutes. This reading answer also helps you to prepare for your IELTS exam. The Sibling Rivalry: How Birth Order Affects Your Personality consists of questions like: Which section contains the following Information? Write the correct letter A-l, Chose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/ OR A NUMBER for each answer, and Look at the following statements and the list of people’s name below. Match each statement with the correct person.

Also, this Sibling Rivalry: How Birth Order Affects Your Personality, says about the impact of birth order on sibling rivalry and personality traits. Participants should go through the IELTS Reading passage to recognize synonyms, identify keywords, and answer the questions. Also, this Open All Day, says about the new restaurant opening. Candidates can use IELTS reading practice questions and answers to enhance their performance in the reading section.

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Topic:

SIBLING RIVALRY: HOW BIRTH ORDER AFFECTS YOUR PERSONALITY

A. For centuries, psychologists, philosophers and pretty much anyone with a family have argued that birth order shapes personality. It goes something like this: firstborns are reliable and hard-working. Middle children are rebellious but friendly. Last-borns are more outgoing and doted on. Only-children are wiser than their years, perfectionists and spoiled. Psychologists have long sought insights into the way birth order shapes us, but recent research has shown the studies to be so flawed that they are almost meaningless.

B. Meanwhile, there is an urgent reason to turn our attention to birth order: we are starting to appreciate how it may influence physical and mental health- not least because some cells in our bodies harbour our older siblings' DNA rather than our own. Regardless of the stereotypes, birth order has profound effects. So how much of our personality, success and health can we blame on being an oldest, youngest, middle or the only child?

C. It was 19th-century polymath Francis Galton, the youngest of nine siblings, who first suggested that birth order might matter. He theorised that oldest sons get more parental attention and thrive on it. Fifty years later, Austrian psychotherapist Alfred Adler, the second of six children, suggested that older siblings were more privileged, but also "power-hungry conservatives" prone to feelings of excessive responsibility and anxiety. He also suggested that middle children were expert negotiators and considered youngest children to be pampered, irresponsible and lazy, due to being overindulged by their parents.

D. In 1995, Frank Sulloway, now at the University of California, Berkeley, revitalised the debate by proposing his "family niche" theory for birth order effects: this says that siblings' personalities vary because they each take on a different role within the family dynamic, which reduces competition and facilitates cooperation. For example, in childhood, simply by being older, the firstborn tends to be physically bigger, so might become more aggressive or use their size to their advantage. They are also able to please adults by acting as a surrogate parent to their siblings, which increases their conscientiousness.

Later-born children can't, or have no need to, fill the same niches, so look for alternatives. This may require them to develop greater imagination than older siblings, but make them more self-conscious as a result. In this way, says Sulloway, birth order isn't a direct cause of, but a proxy for, the family dynamics that mould your personality.

E. There was only one problem with his proposal: nobody could prove it was right. Over the next two decades, many studies that tried to elucidate exactly which personality traits were driven by birth order found contradictory results. "The literature was a huge mess," says Julia Rohrer at the University of Leipzig, Germany. "So many of the associations that were found were cherry-picked."

F. The studies didn't account for the huge number of confounding factors, like the fact that an older child is likely to be more conscientious purely because this trait increases with age. Besides, many studies didn't account for socioeconomic factors, the age gap between children or how old the parents were when they had them. And when associations were found, they would hold only within very specific circumstances - for older brothers, or for three-child families or for people with younger sisters exactly two years apart. "Basically, If you analyse data in enough ways, you'll find something," says Rohrer,

*but these are just false positives there by random chance.*

G. In 2015 Rohrer and her colleagues analysed data from 20,000 children across the UK, US and Germany - the biggest data set used up until then. After taking into account all of the confounding factors that had plagued previous studies, they found that birth order had almost no influence on personality whatsoever. The only genuine effect they could find was an association with birth order and intellect - and even that was tiny, equating to a drop in IQ of about 1 to 2.5 points between the oldest and youngest child. That is nothing, says Rohrer. It is about the same difference that you would expect to get if you took an identical IQ test on different days. "It's interesting that we reliably see this association, but it's not something that you can detect in everyday life," she says.

H. This would have been the final nail in the coffin for the birth order effect, had Sulloway not spent the best part of the past two decades trying to take the field one step further. To address the doubts swirling around earlier research, he created three new personality surveys that would allow him to better control for confounding factors. He saw four major issues to address. First, people's perception of their own personality differs depending on who they think about themselves in relation to. You may see yourself as deferential to your parents, but domineering compared with younger siblings, for instance.

Second and third: people don't always answer honestly on quizzes, and also tend to acquiesce to questions - so they might say they are both talkative and quiet, for instance, when answering different questions. Research shows that people give more realistic answers if they have previously had to think about moral conundrums. Finally, you need a lot of data. "And that's why it took 18 years to complete," says Sulloway.

J. Like Rohrer, Sulloway's team found a consistent, if small, increases in intelligence in firstborns compared with younger siblings. But unlike her work, his latest analysis suggests that there are real, identifiable effects of birth order on personality. Previous research has confirmed that genetics explain up to 50 per cent of the variation between our personalities. Sulloway and his colleagues found that age and gender contribute 5.5 and 10 per cent, respectively. Birth order, on the other hand, was more modest, accounting for about 4.1 per cent of the variation between personalities. "This is still a pretty impressive effect." savs Sullowav. "Especially where the importance of birth order has long been doubted."

Questions 27-31

Reading Passage 3 has nine sections A-I.

Which section contains the following Information? Write the correct letter A-l.

27. Suggestions on the fact that firstborns receive more privileges from parents.

Answer: C

Supporting statement: "He theorised that oldest sons get more parental attention and thrive on it."

Keywords: firstborns, privileges

Keyword Location: para C, line 2

Explanation: This section highlights Galton's suggestion that firstborns receive special attention from parents, implying they gain more privileges, which shapes their development.

28. Contrasting results of efforts to explain which features of personality were shaped by birth order.

Answer: E

Supporting statement: "Over the next two decades, many studies that tried to elucidate exactly which personality traits were driven by birth order found contradictory results."

Keywords: Contrasting, birth order

Keyword Location: para E, line 1-2

Explanation: This part of the text discusses the inconsistency in findings from previous studies on the personality traits influenced by birth order.

29. A theory about the impact of birth order on forming a close-knit family.

Answer: D

Supporting statement: "... siblings' personalities vary because they each take on a different role within the family dynamic, which reduces competition and facilitates cooperation."

Keywords: siblings', reduces competition

Keyword Location: para D, line 2

Explanation: Sulloway's "family niche" theory proposes that birth order impacts family roles, reducing competition and encouraging cooperation, thereby creating a closer family unit.

30. Our body parts carry genetic information of our elder brothers and sisters.

Answer: B

Supporting statement: "... some cells in our bodies harbour our older siblings' DNA rather than our own."

Keywords: DNA, older siblings'

Keyword Location: para B, line 2-3

Explanation: This section mentions the scientific observation that cells can carry DNA from older siblings, showing a biological impact of birth order.

31. Tricky questions about morality usually make people aware of answering realistically later.

Answer: H

Supporting statement: "Research shows that people give more realistic answers if they have previously had to think about moral conundrums."

Keywords: Research, moral conundrums

Keyword Location: para H, line 8

Explanation: This section suggests that considering moral dilemmas helps individuals respond more honestly in personality surveys.

Questions 32 - 34

Chose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/ OR A NUMBER for each answer.

32. Besides aggressiveness, what negative personality traits are older siblings believed to have as a result of being born earlier than other children?

Answer: Power-hungry conservatives

Supporting statement: “He theorised that oldest sons get more parental attention and thrive on it. Fifty years later, Austrian psychotherapist Alfred Adler… suggested that older siblings were more privileged, but also 'power-hungry conservatives' prone to feelings of excessive responsibility and anxiety.”

Keywords: parental attention, older siblings

Keyword Location: para C, line 3-5

Explanation: Alfred Adler described older siblings as "power-hungry conservatives" due to the privileges and responsibilities they receive, which can lead to these negative personality traits.

33. How many children did Francis Galton's parents probably have?

Answer: Nine siblings

Supporting statement: “It was 19th-century polymath Francis Galton, the youngest of nine siblings, who first suggested that birth order might matter.”

Keywords: 19th-century, nine siblings

Keyword Location: para C, line 1

Explanation: The text explicitly states that Francis Galton was the youngest of nine siblings, meaning his parents had nine children.

34. What did Sulloway believe as a measure to mould people's personalities, instead of a direct contributing factor?

Answer: Family dynamics

Supporting statement: “In this way, says Sulloway, birth order isn’t a direct cause of, but a proxy for, the family dynamics that mould your personality.”

Keywords: family dynamics, Sulloway

Keyword Location: para D, line 10-11

Explanation: Sulloway believed birth order is not a direct factor but rather reflects the underlying family dynamics that influence personality development.

Questions 35-40

Looking at the following statements (Questions 35-40) and the list of people's names below. Match each statement with the correct person, A-D.

LIST OF NAMES

A. Francis Galton

B. Alfred Adler

C. Frank Sulloway

D. Julia Rohrer

35. Lastborns' negative qualities result from parents' overindulgence.

Answer: Alfred Adler

Supporting statement:"He also suggested that middle children were expert negotiators and considered the youngest children to be pampered, irresponsible and lazy, due to being overindulged by their parents."

Keywords: parents, overindulged

Keyword Location: para C, line 5-6

Explanation: Alfred Adler explicitly attributes negative qualities of lastborns to their parents' overindulgence, making this statement a direct match to him.

36. Test results of analyzing data adequately are randomly false.

Answer: Julia Rohrer

Supporting statement:"...if you analyze data in enough ways, you'll find something, but these are just false positives there by random chance."

Keywords: analyze, false positives

Keyword Location: para F, line 6-7

Explanation: Julia Rohrer points out that results from improperly analyzed data are often false positives, emphasizing the randomness of such findings.

37. One's personality is indirectly shaped by his or her position in the family.

Answer: Frank Sulloway

Supporting statement: "Birth order isn't a direct cause of, but a proxy for, the family dynamics that mould your personality."

Keywords: proxy, family dynamics

Keyword Location: para D, line 10-11

Explanation: Frank Sulloway asserts that birth order influences personality indirectly, acting through family dynamics.

38. There should not be doubt about the significance of birth rate.

Answer: Frank Sulloway

Supporting statement: "This is still a pretty impressive effect... especially where the importance of birth order has long been doubted."

Keywords: importance, birth order

Keyword Location: para J, line 6-7

Explanation: Frank Sulloway defends the significance of birth order effects, arguing against skepticism about its impact.

39. The association between intellect and birth order are hard to pick out.

Answer: Julia Rohrer

Supporting statement: "...they found that birth order had almost no influence on personality whatsoever. The only genuine effect they could find was an association with birth order and intellect... but it’s not something that you can detect in everyday life."

Keywords: no influence, birth order

Keyword Location: para G, line 3-6

Explanation: Julia Rohrer highlights that while there is an association between intellect and birth order, it is so small that it is nearly imperceptible in practical settings.

40. Surveys about controlling confounding factors require long a period of time to conduct.

Answer: Frank Sulloway

Supporting statement: "Finally, you need a lot of data. 'And that's why it took 18 years to complete,' says Sulloway."

Keywords: 18 years, controlling confounding

Keyword Location: para H, line 11-12

Explanation: Frank Sulloway discusses the time-consuming nature of conducting surveys to adequately control confounding factors, linking this statement to his research efforts.