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Birth Order and Parental Investment

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Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science

Synonyms

Family order effects; Sibling position effects

Definition

Parents may differentially invest limited resources in offspring who have a higher likelihood of survival, which is often older children; and equal division of parental investment across multiple children tends to have differing effects across firstborns, middleborns, and lastborns.

Introduction

During his visit to the Galápagos Islands in 1835, Charles Darwin was puzzled by the extensive diversity he observed among 13 species of Galápagos finches. These birds, he later realized, were actually members of a single, closely related avian group that had evolved its remarkable diversity through competition over time. Human siblings are a lot like Darwin’s finches, as they also tend to diversify in various ways – for example in intellectual performance, personality, and social attitudes (Sulloway 2010). Some of this diversity among siblings is genetic. On average, full siblings share only half of their genes unless they are...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Stirling, Stirling, UK

    Feifei Bu

  2. University of California-Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Frank J. Sulloway

Authors
  1. Feifei Bu
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  2. Frank J. Sulloway
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Feifei Bu or Frank J. Sulloway .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Oakland Univ Dept of Psycholgy, Rochester, Michigan, USA

    Viviana Weekes-Shackelford

  2. Department of Psychology, Oakland University, Rochester, Michigan, USA

    Todd K. Shackelford

  3. Rochester, Michigan, USA

    Viviana A. Weekes-Shackelford

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© 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

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Bu, F., Sulloway, F.J. (2016). Birth Order and Parental Investment. In: Weekes-Shackelford, V., Shackelford, T., Weekes-Shackelford, V. (eds) Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_3586-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_3586-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-16999-6

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