Aggregate and Distributive Analyses of Birth Order Effects

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The proposed research follows a prediction made by the PI more than twenty years ago that SATs, which were then alarmingly dropping, would continue to decline for four years, and that the trend would reverse itself in 1980. In particular, the hypothesis held that aggregate SAT trends follow aggregate national birth orders. Not only was this prediction confirmed, the reversal occurring exactly in 1980 (which was also a reversal for national trends in birth order) but remarkably consistent with it were data on the A-levels collected in the United Kingdom and on the Iowa Basic Skills scores. The prediction derives from the confluence model of intellectual development which focuses on the changing intellectual environment in the family during the children's growth years and explains differences in intellectual maturity of children of different birth ranks and family sizes. The proposed research seeks to examine data on aggregate intellectual performance in a number of countries to test the generality of the relationship found between aggregate trends in birth order and intellectual performance scores. Research will also inquire into collective values, stereotypes, and attitudes toward birth order focusing on specific populations, such as teachers, parents of teen-agers, prospective parents, and high school students. An important derivation from the data and theory is the phenomenon of collective potentiation. It was found that cohorts that include large proportions of first born manifest high standards of excellence, and the entire group performs at a more advanced level than cohorts with small proportions of first borns. The dynamics of this phenomenon, not only in the area of intellectual performance and birth order, but in other collective domains, will be extensively studied in the United States population, and in Poland, Japan, and possibly China.