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Firstborn Get the Brains

Posted by Zonk on Fri Jun 22, 2007 08:22 AM
from the as-an-eldest-sibling-i-find-this-research-quite-accurate dept.
Education Science
Dekortage writes "Eldest children have higher IQs than their siblings, according to a recent study by Norwegian researchers. The study focused on men, particularly 'on teasing out the biological effects of birth order from the effects of social status,' but indicates that the senior boy in a family (either by being firstborn, or if an elder brother died) has an average IQ two or three points higher than younger brothers. As noted in the New York Times coverage, 'Experts say it can be a tipping point for some people — the difference between a high B average and a low A, for instance... that could mean the difference between admission to an elite private college and a less exclusive public one.'"
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  • 2 or 3 points? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ecklesweb (713901) on Friday June 22 2007, @08:25AM (#19607187)
    And what is the standard error on the particular IQ test they used?

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by JamesRose (1062530)
      They used the records of around 250 000 people, mmmmkay?

      The standard error pretty much disappears at that sort of number of participants.

      • Re:2 or 3 points? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by mypalmike (454265) on Friday June 22 2007, @09:22AM (#19607923) Homepage
        If you try to apply the results of the study to a specific situation, standard error certainly does come into play. For instance, if the error in an IQ test is 5 points, and my older brother gets 3 more points than I do on that test, you can't claim that the study predicted that particular spread.

        • Re:2 or 3 points? (Score:5, Informative)

          by Daniel Dvorkin (106857) * on Friday June 22 2007, @09:59AM (#19608501) Homepage Journal
          What you're talking about is standard deviation, not standard error. SE = SD/sqrt(n), and given that in this case SD = 15 (by definition of IQ) and n = 241310, we have a standard error approaching 0.

          It's a little more complicated than that, of course, since the "n" here has to be applied to each group separately; for the sake of argument, let's assume the sample was equally divided between first-, second-, and third-borns, that means about 80000 in each group, which means the SE is about 0.053. This is plenty to detect the kind of differences they're talking about.

          • I Can explain the whole thing in 4 words. (Score:5, Funny)

            by einnar2000 (985070) on Friday June 22 2007, @11:33AM (#19609877)

            ecklesweb : And what is the standard error on the particular IQ test they used?
            Second son.

            Daniel Dvorkin : What you're talking about is standard deviation, not standard error. SE = SD/sqrt(n), and given that in this case SD = 15 (by definition of IQ) and n = 241310, we have a standard error approaching 0. It's a little more complicated than that, of course, since the "n" here has to be applied to each group separately; for the sake of argument, let's assume the sample was equally divided between first-, second-, and third-borns, that means about 80000 in each group, which means the SE is about 0.053. This is plenty to detect the kind of differences they're talking about.
            First son.

        • Re:2 or 3 points? (Score:4, Funny)

          by Joebert (946227) on Friday June 22 2007, @11:27AM (#19609793) Homepage
          A member of Mensa & I were standing near the edge of the Grand Canyon admiring the view. Both of us were thirsty, he reasoned that since he was the smart one, I should be the one to go get some drinks so he could continue pondering over the view.

          So I pushed him over the edge.

          I still had to fetch a drink, but I felt better about doing it.

  • Man, little brothers really have it bad... (Score:5, Funny)

    by illeism (953119) * on Friday June 22 2007, @08:25AM (#19607197)
    Zonk!!!! - "as-an-eldest-sibling-i-find-this-research-quite-a ccurate" - as the defender of little brother everywhere that's NOT NICE!!!

    ...the senior boy in a family... has an average IQ two or three points higher than younger brothers... Experts say it can be a tipping point for some people
    Well, that explains why I'm a network admin instead of the CIO.
    I also wonder if being a middle child has any effect on IQ...
    I wonder if I will get those extra IQ points if I eat his brains...

  • the teacher (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Speare (84249) on Friday June 22 2007, @08:26AM (#19607199) Homepage
    It wouldn't surprise me, as the act of teaching while learning tends to reinforce the learning. The oldest kid, whether consciously or not, ends up demonstrating any new knowledge and capabilities to the younger kids in the family or neighborhood.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Vancorps (746090)

      A valid idea except for the fact that the older kid starts out ahead of the younger kid so the younger kid spends his/her energy catching up. Usually the younger kid has more time for such things.

      I also think it depends on the atmosphere and age difference. If the kid is 8 years older than the younger then the order probably makes no difference. An even more extreme circumstance is my cousin's girlfriend. She has a daughter who is 26 and 24 years later she had twins. I'm willing to bet the experience she g

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by pato101 (851725)
      I agree.

      Also oldest kid is given more attention during first years and she will be more stimulated by her parents than younger siblings coming afterwards. When younger siblings born, parents are focussed in older son as well, so they not have all the resources (time) they "spent" on the first son.
      At least, this is my experience. With 3 children@home, I'm pretty run out of time lately...

  • Wow man (Score:5, Funny)

    by spellraiser (764337) on Friday June 22 2007, @08:26AM (#19607205) Journal

    Firstborn Get the Brains would be an awesome name for a zombie movie!

    (Pardon my stupid ramblings - I'm not an eldest son, you see)

  • IQ != Intelligence (Score:4, Informative)

    by h2oliu (38090) on Friday June 22 2007, @08:29AM (#19607255)
    In spite of what some would like to tell you, IQ is not a measurement of intelligence. It could be considered a measurement of knowledge and training. Admittedly those who are "More intelligent" in theory could learn better, but these things are so screwy that this is essentially meaningless.

    Maybe first born are just home bodies, and thus spend more time studying.
    • I have a bone to pick with that statement.

      IQ may not be the *only* thing that corresponds to intelligence, but it definitely is an objective measure of some factors that we consider to be the hallmarks of an intelligent person.

      Now, there may be other measures and metrics (objective and subjective) that may correspond to intelligence - good language skills, good social skills, good game playing skills and so on. However, that does not necessarily mean that good quantitative and problem solving skills is also not a good measure.

      A quarterback who can gauge how the field looks at a given moment and decide upon a particular action is just as intelligent (in a different way) as someone who is excellent at arithmetic. Similarly, someone who has excellent social skills (i.e. read emotions) is just as intelligent as someone who has a prodigious memory. A marketing person is just as intelligent as a computer programmer in a different way, and a tennis player is just as intelligent as a musician, in a different way.

      But none of that means that IQ is *not* a measure of intelligence - it is. It just is not the *only* measure of intelligence.

      I think there is a difference. A subtle difference, that's for sure, but a difference nevertheless.

  • Speaking as a middle child... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by PrescriptionWarning (932687) on Friday June 22 2007, @08:30AM (#19607265)
    I can say that my older brother's high IQ is severely hampered by severe lack of common sense :P

  • Girls (Score:3, Interesting)

    by The Queen (56621) on Friday June 22 2007, @08:30AM (#19607267) Homepage
    I'd be more interested in seeing a study that not only includes girls, but breaks down as such:

    Family of only boys
    Family of both with boy as eldest
    Family of both with girl as eldest
    Family of only girls

    For my experience, I am the first born (girl) with one younger sister; I'm a graphics/web designer/computer geek and she's a scientist who works in a lab with dangerous chemicals. If there is a difference between us it's slight. I'd wager that would hold true for most girl siblings regardless of pecking order.

    • Re:Girls (Score:5, Funny)

      by niceone (992278) * on Friday June 22 2007, @08:42AM (#19607411) Journal
      If there is a difference between us it's slight. I'd wager that would hold true for most girl siblings regardless of pecking order.

      Hmm, my wife has a science PhD and her sister is a mor... um, is more talented in non-academic areas.

    • Re:Girls (Score:4, Insightful)

      by vigmeister (1112659) on Friday June 22 2007, @08:45AM (#19607449)
      I do not want to make this sound like flamebait, but if I had 50 graphics/web designer/computer geeks and 50 scientists, only 50% of them would say that the difference between them is slight. And they would all be from the first group.
      I myself am an engineer who looks down upon both scientists and web designers, but I think scientists are smart (high IQ). Web designers are creative - they COULD have high IQs, but need not necessarily have high IQs. This is why DeVry has a program in web design and not in molecular biology. Cheers! -- Vig

  • But.. but... (Score:5, Funny)

    by dmayle (200765) on Friday June 22 2007, @08:32AM (#19607299) Homepage Journal

    but... that can't be true, I'm not the first born in my family, and my older sister... frist post!!! GNAA!!! In Soviet Russia...

    Oh wait, ok, I guess I can kind of see their point...

  • Subtle IQ differences (Score:5, Interesting)

    by John3 (85454) <john3 AT cornells DOT com> on Friday June 22 2007, @08:32AM (#19607301) Homepage Journal
    Interesting study and the stats seem to back up their theory. However, the IQ difference is so subtle that I wonder how much difference it really makes. Does an IQ of 102 really provide that much of an advantage over someone with an IQ of 100?

    Based on personal experience raising two daughters, I'm sure that part of the reason the second child lose two points of IQ is that the parents just start getting tired. :) Your first child gets all your energy, and you try out interesting things, go to interesting places. The arrival of the second child means you now divide your time and energy and so the second child will tend to lose out. When the first child leaves the house the second child is nearly full grown anyway.

    I wonder if they looked at homes where the children were very far apart in age? Suppose one child was 10 when the second child was born. By that time the parents are comfortable with the progress of child #1 and might devote more time to child #2 than they would have if the children were only a year or two apart.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by KokorHekkus (986906)
      Some facts in the article certainly could support your hypothesis that it might be down to less stimuli while young:

      The average IQ of first-born men was 103.2, they found.
      Second-born men averaged 101.2, but second-born men whose older sibling died in infancy scored 102.9.
      And for third-borns, the average was 100.0. But if both older siblings died young, the third-born score rose to 102.6.

      Another related thing I read about (some years ago) was about that truly bilingual (using both languages at home) yo

  • Insesuhtive Claud! (Score:5, Funny)

    by MyLongNickName (822545) on Friday June 22 2007, @08:33AM (#19607319) Journal
    I wuz born sevunteenth you insensuhtive Claud!
  • better than public? Not really. For example, in CS you have places like UC Berkley, University of Maryland, University of Washington that are competitive with places like MIT and CMU. All those schools are public(though they might as well be private for students out of state, but I digress)

    A lot of people like denigrating public universities, but I don't really understand why. To be honest, they are some pretty bad public universities, but there are also bad private schools as well (Patriot University, Regent University etc)

  • ..but second borns get the girls :-) (Score:5, Funny)

    by WarwickRyan (780794) on Friday June 22 2007, @08:41AM (#19607393)
    So you can probably tell that I'm a firstborn, otherwise I'd be 'doing' something interesting instead of posting on /.

  • Data points (Score:5, Interesting)

    by garoo (203070) on Friday June 22 2007, @08:46AM (#19607469)
    Just to commit a plural of anecdotes error:

    Einstein was the older sibling, as I think is Stephen Hawking, Isaac Newton, Johannes Kepler and Robert Oppenheimer - doing fine so far. On the other hand (and merely AFAIK), Blaise Pascal was the second son, Dirac was the second son, Niels Bohr was the second of three, Faraday appears to have been well into the plurals and Ernest Rutherford was the fourth-born child. Van de Graaff had three older brothers, all of whom were into football rather than physics.

    All of which may go to suggest only that seventh sons don't necessarily need to sell their scientific calculator and resign themselves to brainless toil quite yet.

  • This particular type of study is old news -- on average "older children" have slightly more advanced problem solving skills than their younger siblings precisely because of birth order -- because the oldest child is taught their problem solving skills directly from an adult, no "just barely older but still a kid" filter in between. So they got one or two more questions right on a paper test that only measures certain kinds of problem solving ability and other skills not at all.

    I can't put my hands on the exact set of studies right now so this will only be anecdotal evidence, but there are examples of "quite young" siblings being quite brilliant compared to next older siblings precisely because there was just enough age difference between the youngster and an older (teenage plus) sibling that was close enough to an adult to provide direction in problem skills at a nearly adult level AND still be young enough and close enough to how a little kid thinks to teach those skills in a way that makes sense to littler kid at their lower developmental level.


    What I am really saying is that an article built around an averaging statistic like those quoted are useless news, not stuff that matters.

  • Nature vs. Nurture ? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by natoochtoniket (763630) on Friday June 22 2007, @09:25AM (#19607965)

    Clearly, the first born gets all of the parents attention for some period of time, before the second is born. The second gets only (roughly) half of the parents attention. I would be very surprised if parental attention at a young age does not have a large effect on the child. Giving one child twice as much parental attention as the other, for the first year or two of their respective lives, seems likely to give the one an advantage over the other. A small difference in communication or learning skills acquired during that first year might make the first born better able to learn other things later in life.

    The observation that first-born children score higher on standardized tests does not speak to the cause of that difference. A correlation does not imply a cause.

    Coincidently, I am the first-born of three. I have a Ph.D., the middle sibling has a masters, and the youngest has a bachelors.

  • I'm a firstborn zombie.

    Braaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiinnnnnssss....

  • This doesn't always work (Score:4, Funny)

    by Green Light (32766) on Friday June 22 2007, @11:09AM (#19609503) Journal
    Neither of my two older brothers are as smart as I am.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Ihlosi (895663)
      Clueless HR people definitely will. Even if it's just the criterium the decides between to otherwise equally suitable candidates.

    • Re:Who cares..? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by cowscows (103644) on Friday June 22 2007, @10:10AM (#19608645) Journal
      For a large majority of the people and jobs out there, the name of your college will cease to really matter after you get your first real job. Education is great and all, but if you've got a couple years of decent work experience under your belt, where you went to school is only a minor footnote.

      It might make a bit more of a difference right out of school, where they employers don't have much else to go on. But in that case, your best bet is get a job through personal connections, relying on your school's name probably isn't your best bet.
    • OK, I'm the older brother by 3.5 years, have a Master's degree, etc., whereas my brother has a high school diploma and rides in on a Harley.
      I wonder, though, if there isn't a broader organizational behavior principle at work here.
      Keep an eye on the phrase

      the senior boy in a family (either by being firstborn, or if an elder brother died)

      How often at work is there a tautology, whereby the senior headz are the only ones equipped to perform certain tasks/make decisions, simply by virtue of longevity. Once t

    • Re:Ugh IQ... (Score:5, Informative)

      by kripkenstein (913150) on Friday June 22 2007, @08:48AM (#19607485) Homepage

      A difference of three IQ points seems almost within the margin of error
      Since you say 'seems', I presume you didn't read TFA, otherwise you would know whether it did or didn't fall within the margin of error. And therefore it appears that you don't understand the concept of 'margin of error'. The margin of error can be arbitrarily small, it depends on the sample size .

      In this study, they had 241,310 subjects. If memory serves me right, the population standard deviation is 15 points, so we have a margin or error along the order of 15 divided by the square root of 241,310, or 0.03. That is, two orders of magnitude smaller than 3 IQ points, which to you 'seems almost within the margin of error'.

      Of course, the actual margin of error depends on other things, such as how many children were firstborn in the sample, how many were secondborn, etc. Still, with such a large sample, the final standard deviation should be much smaller than a single IQ point, making their conclusions statistically interesting. And, in fact, if the results were not statistically significant, they wouldn't get published very easily, and certainly not in Science.

    • Re:How about the $$$? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by AutopsyReport (856852) on Friday June 22 2007, @08:52AM (#19607531)
      Grades aren't meaningless if you have any plans to attend University. They aren't meaningless if you plan to earn an MBA, MD, LLB, or a graduate degree (Masters, PhD, etc.).

      It's true that a lot of people have earned a great living despite poor grades or lack of education, but these people represent a minority. For many people, grades are a major factor in determining acceptance or rejection to paths of life that guarantee some amount of financial success.

      It's fairly easy to figure out how school grades can translate into money. If you've got top grades, you earn a chance at being accepted to a Law school (for example). Once you've done your time, you are practically guaranteed a six-figure income: that's money in your pocket because you excelled at school. However, if you act as if grades are irrelevant, you're success might just be dancing with Lady Luck.

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