Older sisters and younger brothers: The impact of siblings on preference for competition

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in AbstractStudies in psychology have long argued the possibility that sibling structure, such as birth order and the gender of siblings, shapes one's feminine and masculine personality traits, such as a preference for competition. In light of recent developments in the economics literature on the gender gap, this implies that familial environment could explain why some women do opt for competition, while the vast majority of women do not and, thus, are underrepresented on the career ladder. By conducting a controlled experiment on Japanese high school students, this study quantifies the impact of sibling structure on one's preference for competition, and examines whether a long-debated sibling hypothesis in psychology is supported from the viewpoint of experimental economics. Consistent with the hypothesis, our results reveal that men with older sisters were significantly less likely to enter a competitive environment compared with only sons. This effect is comparable in size to the effect of being female on the decision to compete. Our study also found moderate evidence that women with younger brothers were more likely to compete than only daughters.Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: C91, D03, J16

Are Economic Preferences Shaped by the Family Context? The Impact of Birth Order and Siblings’ Sex Composition on Economic Preferences

“…Their survey did not involve incentives, they had adult participants, and they did not investigate trust. The only studies we know that focus on birth order effects and use incentivized experiments are the studies by Courtiol et al (2009) and Okudaira et al (2015). Courtiol et al (2009) found in a sample of French students that first born children are less trustful and reciprocate less than later born children in a standard investment game by Berg et al (1995).…”

“…Furthermore, while we studied adolescents for the reasons explained above, Courtiol et al (2009) let adult university students participate in their study. Okudaira et al (2015) examined competitive behavior and reported no birth order effects. Yet, they found that the siblings' sex composition matters; men with older sisters were less competitive than men with older brothers in their Japanese high school sample.…”

Imprinting and flexibility in human face cognition

“…It has been suggested that individuals in mixed-sex sibling pairs assimilate traits more typically associated with the other gender 46 . Boys with older sisters are considered to be substantially more feminine than their peers with older brothers 47 . Such role-assimilation mechanism paired with specific birth order, sex-ratio and number of siblings could also explain our results.…”

Competitiveness and individual characteristics: a double-blind placebo-controlled study using oxytocin

“…The tournament represents labour market outcomes, such as promotions and hiring. A growing body of literature focuses on the effects of external factors such as environment 19 – 21 , culture 22 , 23 , and internal factors such as hormones 24 – 27 and preferences 28 , 29 on competitiveness. Bartling et al 28 found that individuals with higher personality trait scores for “agreeableness” were less likely to enter tournaments than to enter piece-rate schemes.…”