Abstract
Prior to my discussion of Dr. Zajonc’s interpretation of the Belmont and Morolla (1973) data, I would like to make a few comments on that study. Their data are truly beautiful, and the birth order effect appears to be quite dramatic. However, with 386,114 subjects, even minor effects may show up very nicely. It would therefore be interesting to know in terms of raw scores what differences existed on average between adjoining sibling positions for a given family size. Unfortunately, the original study never uses raw scores, but what they call “class scores,” that is, a classification applied to the raw scores by the Dutch military. It is therefore impossible to evaluate the seriousness of the disadvantage of children who have higher ordinal positions. It would appear to make a difference, whether the disadvantage due to higher ordinal positions measures in terms of .10 or 10.0 IQ points.
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References
Belmont, L., and Marolla, F. A. Birth order, family size, and intelligence. Science, 1973, 182, 1096–1101.
Jacobs, R. C., and Campbell, D. T., Perpetutation of an arbitrary tradition through several generations of laboratory micro culture Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 1961, 62, 649–658.
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© 1976 Plenum Press, New York
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Stroebe, W. (1976). Critique. In: Strickland, L.H., Aboud, F.E., Gergen, K.J. (eds) Social Psychology in Transition. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-8765-1_15
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-8765-1_15
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