This is a description.

For more than half a century, studies of birth order and human behavior have been at odds over the existence, magnitude, and specific nature of the relationship. Birth order is an imperfect proxy for multiple within- family influences that shape personality development within families, but that is overlooked in most studies. A failure to consider individual differences and their sometimes complex interactions with birth order, as well as the role of the behavioral context, are some of the methodological problems that can be attributed to the previous disagreements in this field. The results of a novel research design aimed at overcoming these problems were presented in this talk. The results show suppression of birth order effects, which shows that birth order appears to explain upwards of ten personality differences compared with what has been documented.

The educational objectives are listed.

1. Describe what is known about birth order and its relationship with personality.
2. Describe the actual causes of birth order effects, given that birth order is really just a proxy for certain aspects of family dynamics that are generally overlooked in studies on this subject.
3. Describe how remarkably context sensitive birth order effects are in the expression of personality, which helps to explain why so much controversy still exists about the nature and magnitude of these effects.

Session may be edited to preserve confidentiality.