Free Invisible Influence by Jonah Berger Page A

brothers and sisters, but they may have played basketball or volleyball instead of soccer.
    So if younger siblings aren’t simply learning from, or competing against, their older brother or sister, why are they more successful?
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    Firstborn children tend to do better academically. 3 They have higher GPAs, score higher on the SAT, and have higher national merit scores. They are more likely to go to college and attend more selective schools.
    While some attribute this increased academic achievement to differential parental investment, or the additional resources available to firstborn children, another explanation is more social in nature.
    Not surprisingly, firstborn children are almost always the first to attend school. And while not all of them excel in education, many of them at least try to do well. Indeed, firstborns tend to be seen as the studious and conscientious sibling. 4 Not surprisingly then, firstborns tend to be overrepresented in Who’s Who lists and among award-winning scientists, including those who have won the Nobel Prize. Firstborns are also overrepresented among world political leaders, including U.S. presidents. 5
    Born into this environment, younger siblings are faced with a choice: They can try to do well in school, like their older brotheror sister, or they can seek a different niche. They can follow the trodden path or they can break out and blaze a new one.
    And one way to differentiate is to find a different domain to pursue. Consistent with this notion, younger siblings tend to do better in sports. Not only are laterborns overrepresented among elite athletes, they’re overrepresented among successful athletes in general.
    One study examined the extracurricular activities of over 300,000 incoming college freshmen. Hundreds of thousands of kids at over 550 different schools. Everything from small two-year colleges to large, four-year universities. Though few of these students would ever compete at a national level, the study examined a more middling level of sporting achievement: receiving a varsity letter.
    Turns out, good high school athletes tended to have older siblings. Laterborns were more likely to have lettered in high school. 6 Younger siblings were also more likely to spend time discussing sports with their friends.
    Whether these lettermen (and -women) had one sibling or three or four didn’t seem to matter. What mattered is that they had at least one older brother or sister. Firstborns were less likely to be varsity athletes and only children were even less likely.
    Inter-sibling differences extend beyond academics and sports. 7 Firstborn children tend to hold more conservative political and social beliefs. They’re less likely to support abortion or endorse casual sex. Laterborns, however, tend to be more liberal. They’re less likely to attend religious services and more likely to admit to cheating on a test or drinking beer in high school.
    It’s important not to overgeneralize from these relationships. Many of the differences, while statistically significant, are not huge, and they are averages, not rules. Many younger childrenare just as smart, or even smarter, than their older siblings. Many older children are good at sports, and even better than their younger siblings. Some firstborns cheat on tests and some younger siblings are more conservative.
    But, on average, there are differences. In fact, personality-wise, siblings end up being little more alike than any two people randomly plucked from the population. 8
    Environmental factors have a big impact on personality. By some estimates, half of the variance in personality is described by one’s surroundings. Some parenting styles may encourage children to be outgoing, while other styles may encourage kids to be neurotic.
    But the data suggest that siblings may actually grow up in quite different environments. 9 The personalities of twins reared together, for example, are not systematically more