Department of Criminal Justice, East Carolina University, 245 Rivers Building, Greenville, NC 27858, USA.
Pers Soc Psychol Bull. 2013 Aug;39(8):1017-29. doi: 10.1177/0146167213488215. Epub 2013 May 29.
Juvenile delinquency has long been associated with birth order in popular culture. While images of the middle child acting out for attention or the rebellious youngest child readily spring to mind, little research has attempted to explain why. Drawing from Adlerian birth order theory and Sulloway's born-to-rebel hypothesis, I examine the relationship between birth order and a variety of delinquent outcomes during adolescence. Following some recent research on birth order and intelligence, I use new methods that allow for the examination of between-individual and within-family differences to better address the potential spurious relationship. My findings suggest that contrary to popular belief, the relationship between birth order and delinquency is spurious. Specifically, I find that birth order effects on delinquency are spurious and largely products of the analytic methods used in previous tests of the relationship. The implications of this finding are discussed.
青少年犯罪长期以来一直与流行文化中的出生顺序有关。虽然人们很容易想到中间孩子为了引起注意而表现得很叛逆，或者最小的孩子很叛逆，但很少有研究试图解释原因。本文借鉴阿德勒的出生顺序理论和苏洛维的“生来叛逆”假说，考察了出生顺序与青少年时期各种犯罪行为之间的关系。根据最近关于出生顺序和智力的研究，我使用了新的方法，允许考察个体间和家庭内的差异，以更好地解决潜在的虚假关系。我的研究结果表明，与普遍看法相反，出生顺序与犯罪之间的关系是虚假的。具体来说，我发现出生顺序对犯罪的影响是虚假的，而且很大程度上是由于以前测试这种关系的分析方法所致。讨论了这一发现的意义。
