Ordinal position and peer popularity.

Abstract

The interaction of siblings within the home may require later-born children— those with less power than their older siblings—to develop more effective interpersonal skills. If so, their popularity should be appreciably affected; they should be better liked. To test this line of reasoning, the relationship between ordinal position of a child and his popularity among peers was examined by relating school setting measures of popularity in friendship, play, and schoolwork situations to ordinal position for a sample of 1,750 grade school children from Riverside, California. For friendship and play measures, later-born children were found to be more popular than their early-born peers. This finding held across racial/ethnic background (black, Mexican American, and white), age (kindergarten through sixth grade), and sex. In addition, teacher's ratings of children showed that later borns do possess greater social skills than their early-born peers. Finally, this study failed to confirm previous findings relating ordinal position to (a) measures of achievement and intelligence and (b) personality dimensions such as anxiety, self-concept, and dependence. Among the many characteristics that affect a child's popularity with peers, some undoubtedly stem from experiences prior to his school years. Since a preschool child spends most of his time at home, it must be the arena for a considerable portion of such influences. Further, given that the experiences of children within any individual home should vary, the home environment could produce individual differences that affect pop