Steven Pinker -- How the Mind Works - Hampshire High Italian ...

454 I HOW THE MIND WORKSthe children who show the most promise of success in the world. Thefirst-born has staked a claim in whatever personal and technical skillsshe is best at. There's no point in a later-born competing on that turf; anysuccess would have to come at the expense of the older and more experiencedsibling, and he (or she) would be forcing his parents to pick a winner,with daunting odds against him. Instead, he should find a differentniche in which to excel. That gives his parents an opportunity to diversifytheir investments, because he complements his older sibling's skills incompetition outside the family. Siblings in a family exaggerate their differencesfor the same reason that species in an ecosystem evolve into differentforms: each niche supports a single occupant.Family therapists have discussed these dynamics for decades, but isthere any hard evidence? Sulloway analyzed data on 120,000 peoplefrom 196 adequately controlled studies of birth order and personality. Ashe predicted, first-borns are less open (more conforming, traditional, andclosely identified with parents), more conscientious (more responsible,achievement-oriented, serious, and organized), more antagonistic (lessagreeable, approachable, popular, and easygoing), and more neurotic(less well-adjusted, more anxious). They are also more extroverted (moreassertive, more leaderly), though the evidence is cloudy because they aremore serious, which makes them seem more introverted.Family politics affects not only what people say in paper-and-penciltests but how they act in the world when playing for high stakes. Sullowayanalyzed biographical data from 3,894 scientists who had voicedopinions on radical scientific revolutions (such as the Copernican revolutionand Darwinism), 893 members of the French National Conventionduring the Terror of 1793-1794, more than seven hundredprotagonists in the Protestant Reformation, and the leaders of sixty-twoAmerican reform movements such as the abolition of slavery. In each ofthese shake-ups, later-boms were more likely to support the revolution,first-borns were more likely to be reactionary. The effects are not byproductsof family size, family attitudes, social class, or other confoundingfactors. When evolutionary theory was first proposed and stillincendiary, later-borns were ten times as likely to support it as first-borns.Other alleged causes of radicalism, such as nationality and social class,have only minor effects. (Darwin himself, for example, was upper-classbut later-born.) Later-born scientists are also less specialized, trying theirhands in a greater number of scientific fields.If personality is an adaptation, why should people carry the strategies