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Resolving Controversy Over Birth Order and Personality: By Debate or By Design?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 May 2016

Delroy L. Paulhus ,
Paul Wehr  and
Paul D. Trapnell
Delroy L. Paulhus
Affiliation:
University of British Columbia, Canada
Paul Wehr
Affiliation:
University of British Columbia, Canada
Paul D. Trapnell
Affiliation:
Ohio State University, Mansfield, USA
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Extract

The notion that birth order bears a systematic relation to personality was commonly thought to have succumbed to the formidable attack from Ernst and Angst (1983). The 1996 publication of Frank Sulloway's book Born to Rebel, however, breathed new life into a proposition that most social scientists thought was a dead horse. In response to the book, Townsend (this issue) insists that Sulloway's extraordinary measures to revive this dead horse were unwarranted. Apparently fearing that too many readers have taken the book seriously, Townsend attacks both the contemporary and historical evidence offered by Sulloway.

Type
Roundtable Commentaries
Information
Politics and the Life Sciences , Volume 19 , Issue 2 , September 2000 , pp. 177 - 179
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Politics and the Life Sciences 

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