YouPsychology 1 | Page 12

Where did it all start?

You are probably thinking "How did someone ever sit and think 'Oh maybe there is a link between birth order and personality'? Well, it all started with an Austrain psychiatrist named Alfred Adler. He was one of the first people to suggest that there was a positive correlation between birth order and personality. He believed that birth order left an "impressionable mark" on someones life. Furthermore, he believed that it affected everytthing from love, intelligence and ones habits.

Birth Order continues to be a dubious subject in the world or psychology. Throughtout the years there have been many studies carried out to try and prove the hypothesis that birth order has an affect on your personality and the way your life works out.

Many of these studies found no positive correlation between birth order and personality, yet some proved there was one. The struggle with this subject comes for the about of variables that come with it. Your personality primarily depends on where you grow up, who you grow up around, the amount of money you grow up with, the lessons your parents teach you as you grow up, how loving your parents are, how hard you work at school and the list continues. There are so many things that affect the way you are as a person. So, for some people the birth order/personality correlation would work and others it wouldn't; it all depends how you grew up. One study that did find a connection with birh order and personality was a study done by Lillain Belmont and Francis Marolla in 1973. In this study Belmont and Marolla tested nearly 400,000 subjects.