Friday, May 21, 2021

"Does birth order predict future psychological health?"/ Law & Order: SVU helps 11 yr old girl

Nov. 27, 2015 "Does birth order predict future psychological health?": I cut out this article by Linda Blair in the Edmonton Journal:

Can your birth order position predict how likely you are to develop a psychological disorder and can it predict your diagnosis? Of course not. 

Psychological disorders arise as a result of a number of factors - our genetic make-up, the way we were cared for when young, who we grew up with, role models both negative and positive, and the way we learn to interpret what happens to us. 

None the less, in my clinics I've come to notice some fairly predictable associations with birth order position and psychological diagnosis.

The most common reasons why people are referred to a psychologist are to relieve anxiety and/or depression, and to sort out relationship difficulties. Although individuals in all birth order positions may suffer from these problems, the reasons why they do so tend to differ according to their birth position.

A first-born is the only child in a family who once enjoyed the exclusive attention of their carer(s), and has to learn to share it. As a result, they often continue to seek approval from authority figures and therefore push themselves hard to gain recognition. They're most at risk of burnout, and easily hurt by criticism.

Middle-borns are more likely to feel anxious and depressed because they often have difficulty making career decisions. They grow up working so hard to get on well with others that often they've not had a chance to develop a strong sense of self-direction.

Last-borns tend to suffer readily from low self-esteem. They grow up surrounded by older, often more capable, siblings so they often think of themselves as less competent than they actually are. They also tend to give up easily, because there were always others to sort things out for them.

Single children are used to an orderly adult household, so can be prone to anxiety when things get out of control and may also feel anxious in social settings.

In relationships, first-borns and single children tend to set high standards, for themselves and their partner. As a result, their partner may feel they're sometimes controlling. 

Middle-borns can feel overlooked and "unheard" in their relationship. 

Last-borns often display ambivalence in relationships: they want to be looked after, but dislike feeling restricted.

These are but general tendencies, and they're all learned behaviours. That means they can be changed if an individual is willing to put in the necessary effort.


My opinion: I'm the middle child and I have an older sister and a little brother.  I do get along with both.


Mar. 20, 2017 "The born identity": Today I found this article by Dave McGinn in the Globe and Mail:

The day their kids’ report cards came home last month, Reid Pedersen and his wife, Laureen, sat up in bed having a worried conversation. Their eight-year-old daughter was the same high-achieving child she had always been. But their five-year-old son, who was taking longer to grasp concepts, and with less confidence – was he where he should be?

As most parents of two or more kids know, the time and resources you spend trying to boost their brainpower can differ drastically.

“The first one, it’s 100-per-cent of your focus,” Mr. Pedersen says of raising kids. “With the second, it’s 50-per-cent of your focus.”

His daughter was always in front of Sesame Street, learning numbers with the Count and having her ABCs drilled into her through repetition with Big Bird and the gang. Looking back, he wonders about his son. “I don’t think he’s ever seen that,” Mr. Pedersen says of the television show.

It’s a familiar story for anyone with two kids. The time spent with flip cards and practising letters and doing puzzles to learn shapes or animals drops precipitously from your first child to your second.

Just as familiar is the temptation to see the differences between siblings as the result of birth order. We all know the stereotype of go-getting firstborns and laid-back second children. 

It’s a notion that has been with us for nearly a century, from the theories of Sigmund Freud to countless online quizzes that promise to divine your birth order based on your personality.

But a handful of recent studies, including one recently published in the Journal of Human Resources conducted by economists at the University of Edinburgh, have shed new light on the birth-order effect, which they suggest is only a myth – with one minor exception.

A THEORY IS BORN

There is plenty of history to support the notion that personality is bred in the bone through birth order. For example, look no further than old English laws of primogeniture, which saw first-born children enjoying the entitlement of their superiority by getting pride of place in inheritance.

When it is time to crown a king or queen, first dibs usually go to the eldest child.

“In all cultures and societies people have had rules for the first-born taking over, so there’s this idea that the first-born is more responsible,” says Rodica Damian, an assistant professor of social psychology at the University of Houston.

In the early days of psychoanalysis, Freud, a first-born child, clashed with Alfred Adler, a middle child, over what kind of psychoses might be typical of people based on birth order.

Freud thought first-borns were the most well-adjusted. Adler thought first-borns are neurotic because they feel dethroned. Last-borns are always ignored. The middle child is best adjusted, according to Adler.

“They each thought their respective birth order had the least neuroses,” Damian says.

In the years since psychoanalysis fell out of favour, a new theory based on evolutionary thinking has become dominant.

“Each child fights for an evolutionary niche to get the most attention and resources of parents,” explains Damian.

First-borns try to live up to their parents’ expectations so that’s why they tend to be more responsible, more parent-pleasing and more dominant.

“The second-born has to fill a different niche to get attention … so they have to be more funny, more creative, more rebellious, more sociable,” Damian says.

It is clearly a subject of perennial fascination, with nearly 3.2 million birth-order citations indexed on Google Scholar.

“There’s been research for about 100 years on this and it’s all been very conflicting,” says Damian, who co-authored the largest-ever birth-order study, in 2015. “We had this huge data set, so we thought it was the perfect opportunity to look at this question and hopefully help settle the debate once and for all.”

THEY’VE GOT PERSONALITY

The evolutionary theory that is currently in vogue has launched countless parenting magazine articles that purport to help parents understand kids’ personalities based on birth order with the same clear-sighted certainty as an astrologer who can tell the difference between a know-it-all Capricorn and an indecisive Libra.

According to the theory, first-born children are better leaders, more neurotic, more responsible, less impulsive, while later-born children are more sociable, more extroverted, more self-confident and more agreeable.

But in the 2015 study by Damian and colleagues, birth order’s effect on personality was found to be nil.

The study looked at data collected by the American Institutes for Research of 377,000 high-school students across the United States, including their personality measures and IQs, a huge opportunity to overcome one of the main flaws of many previous studies – very small sample sizes.

“The total sample is bigger than all the previous study samples put together,” Damian says.
Such a large number allowed researchers to examine nearly every type of variation in family structure imaginable: half-siblings, only children, adopted kids.

“Because the data is so big it allows you to get a reliable estimate of really, really special groups,” Damian says.

And the overall effect on personality that researchers were able to detect? In many cases, it was zero. On many personality measures, findings ran contradictory to the current theory. The highest correlation was a minuscule 0.08. For most others, it was a measly correlation of 0.02.

That’s equal to one-50th of a standard deviation. In order to see visible differences in the real world you need at least one full standard deviation.

“The most important thing is that the direction of the effects does not follow that niche hypothesis,” Damian says.

In other words, the study found no evidence to support our current understanding of birth order’s effect on personality – because there is no such effect.

IQ

This is where things get interesting. While studies have never agreed on the relationship between birth order and personality, with some saying birth order predicts all the traits we think it would, others saying it predicts only some of those traits and still more saying it has zero effect, researchers have all noticed one consistent finding: 

First-borns are smarter.

Before you go rubbing that in to your younger brother, however, well – don’t get too far ahead of yourself, smart guy.

In Damian’s study, first-borns were smarter on average by one underwhelming IQ point (less than the margin of error on a standard IQ test).

Another large study conducted by researchers at the University of Leipzig and also published in 2015 made a similar conclusion: First-borns are smarter, but just barely.

After analyzing the data looking for effects on personality both within families and across families, the study found no impact on personality, and only a slight effect on IQ.

“We are really sure that this effect exists but it’s super-small,” says Julia Rohrer, co-author of the study, which looked at data from 20,000 people from Germany, Britain and the United States.

In fact, first-borns were found to be between one and three IQ points higher on average.

But that doesn’t mean first kids will always be smarter, Rohrer cautions.

After all, averages across large populations can’t be applied to individuals.

“We found that in 60 per cent of the cases the first-born was smarter, but in 40 per cent of the cases, the second-born was smarter,” she says.

FINALLY, IQ EXPLAINED

If researchers consistently find that, at least on average, first-born children tend to score higher on IQ tests, the question is, why?

Look no further than the Pedersens, or likely your own experience if you have more than one child.

Researchers call it the confluence theory. Put simply, parents put more time and resources into their first child, especially more time talking to them, which is why first-borns tend to do better on the verbal-ability section of IQ tests.

A study published in November in the Journal of Human Resources looked at nearly 5,000 children who were assessed every two years, from the time they were born to age 14.

Researchers found that parents put in less time reading to second kids and subsequent children and less time on other forms of mental stimulation such as doing crafts and playing musical instruments.

“As you have more kids you have less time and less attention,” says Ana Nuevo-Chiquero, a lecturer in the School of Economics at the University of Edinburgh, who led the study.

BUT, BUT, BUT

“But explain this to me,” I said to Damian. “I hear everything that you are saying and rationally it makes sense, but why do I look at my two children and see perfect stereotypes of birth-order personalities?”

She laughed, and mentioned a commentary she and her fellow researchers published after their study about exactly this topic.

“We believe birth order will persist as a zombie theory for a very long time,” she says. “Despite all the science behind it, people have very, very strong feelings about it.”

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/parenting/settling-the-birth-order-debate-once-and-forall-parenting/article34322380/

Comments:

oldgit_gittinolder
1 day ago

Interesting but really not all that surprising. It seems humans are hard-wired to categorize just about anything, making it all too easy to believe catch-all theories that appear to give easy to understand explanations for certain phenomena.

The general acceptance of birth order theories is likely working on the same level that makes some people believe in astrology (as a benign misconception) and racism (as a more sinister one).

Our tendency to categorize isn't all bad, since in many cases it helps us understand the world and how we fit into it. But it's all too easy to morph that into broad generalizations, and this is where we can get into trouble.
4 Reactions

My opinion: I agree with that comment.  We as humans do like to categorize things to understand things. 



openwater2010
1 day ago

Family size dropped sharply after birth control was legalised (1967 in Canada). With smaller family sizes the difference is less marked.


With the larger families older children, particularly girls, were drafted into adult roles supervising their younger siblings. Last borns were spared that and allowed to remain children longer, delaying their transition into real world, adult like responsibilities.

The article mentioned division of attention between children. It also works the other way. With the 1st child parents can tag team the child. With a 2nd child the children can tag team a lone parent if the other is out of the house, leaving the parent more drained and affecting the way they interact with both children.


Nanakanda
6 hours ago

Raise all children in the modern village, communally, sans parents; will eliminate all social problems.
My opinion: I believe in the birth order theory.  Now after reading this article, not so much.

My older sister is the oldest.  She is a overachiever.  She has a degree in business.

My little brother is the youngest.  He is not all about having fun.  He has a degree in business.

I have a 2 yr college diploma in Professional Writing. 


Mar. 8, 2021: I am the only one who is interested in performing arts like singing, dancing, and acting.  When my parents wouldn't let me go to Victoria Performing Arts school, that really suppressed my career goal.

That turned to wanting to be a TV writer and producer.

Gr. 9 health class: I remember we studied this in class.

My Outlier script: This was also when I was 14 yrs old and in gr. 9.  I was writing this script about a family and I relied on the birth order theory.

The oldest daughter was the smart and mature one.

The youngest son was into the performing arts.

The middle daughter was the individualistic one.


There isn't a theme this week, but here are the other 2 blog posts of the week:

Certificate in Applied Positive Psychology (Part 1)



Certificate in Applied Positive Psychology (Part 2)






My week:


May 9, 2021 "Online returns find second life at 'real-life treasure hunt' business": Have you ever heard of Krazy Binz?  I haven't:

If you've ever wondered what happens to the items returned to online retailers, you might find some of those rejected purchases at a new retail outlet called Krazy Binz in Ontario and Alberta.

The chain of liquidation centres gives returned, overstocked or opened items a second life after leaving online and big-box stores.

"We have different suppliers for different retail businesses," said Nora Mousa, general manager of Krazy Binz. "We get shipments, it's all mixed up and we put it all in the bins."

Prices are set depending on the day of the week, with stock replenished on Wednesday nights. Those shipments can include everything from televisions and video game consoles such as Playstations, to cat condos, kitchen sinks and KY jelly.

"It's a brand new shipment every Wednesday night, every week. So we start our week on Thursday with a $25 day because it's a brand new shipment," said Mousa.

Prices then decrease each day of the week, until a new shipment arrives after seven days.

By Monday items are sold for six dollars apiece and on Wednesdays, everything is a dollar. Leftover items are donated, recycled or packed by the hundreds into mystery bags and sold for $15, according to the general manager.

"Our motto is real-life treasure hunt," said Mousa.

Online returns find second life at 'real-life treasure hunt' business | CBC Radio

My opinion: I like that they're selling stuff really cheap, and this is good for the environment, and donating items to people who need them.


May 13, 2021  "Greyhound Canada to cut all bus routes, end operations":

Greyhound Canada is permanently cutting all bus routes across the country, shutting down the intercity bus carrier’s operations in Canada after nearly a century of service.

The motor coach company says its remaining routes in Ontario and Quebec will cease permanently on Thursday.

Its American affiliate, Greyhound Lines, Inc., will continue to operate cross-border routes to Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver once the border reopens.

Yet the rise in car ownership, ride sharing, discount airlines and urban migration has slowly eroded bus ridership, leading Greyhound Canada to gradually reduce the frequency of some services and cut other routes altogether.

Greyhound Canada to cut all bus routes, end operations | Globalnews.ca

My opinion: I was like: "What about Red Arrow?"  I looked it up, and the buses travel within Alberta.

Red Arrow Motorcoach

"7 U.S. siblings orphaned crash adopted": Jan Willis was scrolling through her Facebook feed and saw the news.  She and her husband Gary had 5 kids and foster kids, who are adults.  They then decided to adopt all of them.  Awww....

7 U.S. siblings orphaned in crash adopted | CTV News

May 14, 2021 "Toronto plastic surgeon's licence suspended over social media posts, surveillance of patients without consent": 

A Toronto plastic surgeon and self-styled social media influencer has had his licence to practise medicine suspended. 

In a decision released on May 12, the disciplinary committee of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO) suspended the licence of Dr. Martin Jugenburg — who goes by Dr. 6ix on social media — for six months over inappropriate online posts and for his use of surveillance cameras in his downtown Toronto clinic. 

The decision sparked a mixed reaction from a woman who visited Jugenburg's clinic, the Toronto Cosmetic Surgery Institute, in 2018.

"I'm glad there's been some sort of real penalty from him, but at the same time I don't think he should be allowed to practise anymore as a medical doctor," she said. 

The woman, whose name is being withheld to protect her identity, said she had no idea cameras would be recording her during a breast implant consultation.

"I felt pretty violated and very, very angry," she said, recalling the moment while watching a story by CBC's Marketplace that she realized there may have been cameras recording her consultation.

In 2018, while reporting undercover for a story on breast implants, Marketplace producers spotted security cameras in a closed-door consultation room at Jugenburg's clinic.

The college and Ontario's privacy commissioner both launched investigations into the Jugenburg and his clinic. 


My opinion: I'm sure there are other patients who would give consent to put their photos on social media posts and being filmed if they were asked.  At least CBC Marketplace investigated into this.

I used to watch newsmagazine shows like 20/20 from 2003-2014.  I quit because I was really busy with work.  I have watched W-Five here and there.

May 18, 2021 Good weather: Sat. May 15, Sun. May 16, and Mon. May 17, was really sunny weather.  I was sitting outside in my backyard listening and watching my self- development videos, and reading the news on my tablet.

May 19, 2021 Snow in May: At first it was raining, and then came snow.  I remember it snowed in May in 2015.  I went to a job interview that day.

"A woman says she hired a fake groom and had a wedding photo shoot to get back at her ex after a breakup": Today I found this article by Samantha Grindell on Yahoo news:

  • Sarah Vilard said she pretended to get married after a breakup in 2019.

  • She says she hired a fake groom and bought a wedding dress to make the wedding seem real.

  • Vilard made a TikTok about the experience, and it has over 2 million views to date.

  • Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.

One of the latest TikTok trends centers around reactions to breakups.

As Stephen Kramer Glickman's "Crazy" plays, a person tells their viewers how they responded after they got dumped, with some going as far as to create the illusion that they were seeing someone new.

But one TikToker says she took things even further, pretending to get married just three months after she and her ex parted ways.

Sarah Vilard says she faked her own wedding after a breakup

Vilard is a 24-year-old student from Germany.

In 2019, she and her ex-boyfriend, who she has kept anonymous, broke up.

Three months after the breakup, Vilard said she decided to try to "get revenge" on her ex by making it seem like she got married.

She says she bought a wedding dress, hired a fake groom, and had a faux wedding photo shoot.

Vilard had not shared how much money she spent on the fake wedding at the time of writing.

She said she posted photos of the fake wedding to social media to get her ex's attention after the shoot - and it worked.

"He found out through Instagram and texted me the next day and freaked out because he thought I was cheating on him while we were together," Vilard told Jam Press.

"That, of course, wasn't the case," she went on to say. "But he came to my house and wanted to talk to me afterward. I wasn't interested."

Vilard says she later removed her ex's presence from her social media, as well as traces of the photo shoot.

"I blocked him everywhere and set my profile to private and removed the pictures," she told Jam Press.

Today, Vilard says she is single.

"I'm happy to be able to focus on myself," she told Jam Press.

A woman says she hired a fake groom and had a wedding photo shoot to get back at her ex after a breakup (yahoo.com)

My opinion: I thought she put a lot of time, effort, and mostly money to play this prank on her ex.  That seems really expensive and I wouldn't spend that much money.  How about you put on your Facebook status that you're in a relationship?  Take some pictures with someone.


May 20, 2021 "‘Law & Order: SVU’ Lessons Help 11-Year-Old Orlando Girl Mark Her Would-Be Abductor – Mariska Hargitay Responds": Here's a positive news story.  Law and Order: SVU is edu- tainment: Today I found this article by Bruce Haring on Yahoo news:


An Orlando girl fought off a would-be kidnapper Tuesday and used lessons learned from watching episodes of television’s Law & Order: Special Victims Unit to help apprehend him.

Alyssa Bonal, 11, was waiting for her school bus when a knife-wielding man tried to abduct her. The girl had been playing with some blue slime when the man approached. She fought him off and ran away, but made sure to mark him with the slime, an identification tactic she learned from watching Law & Order: SVU.

The man, identified as 30-year-old Jared Paul Stanga, was captured later and still had the blue dye from the slime on his arms. Watch surveillance video of the attempted kidnapping in a local TV news report below.

When the news story broke, Law & Order star Mariska Hargitay reached out to Bonal on social media to offer her support and encouragement. Hargitay plays Detective Olivia Benson on the show.

“Alyssa, first and most important, I am so relieved and grateful to know that you are safe. And I am so honored to be part of your incredible story,” Hargitay wrote on Instagram. “You are one BRAVE, Strong and Smart young woman. I think the SVU squad might have to add slime to their crimefighting gear! Take good care of yourself and each other. With all my love, your number one fan, Mariska.”

He was charged with attempted kidnapping of a child under 13, aggravated assault and battery. Stanga has bail set at $1.5 million. Authorities said he had an extensive criminal record that included child sex abuse charges.

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