8 ms·

I'm dimly aware of the stereotypes, but I'm extremely surprised at how much of a political, hot-button issue it seems to be here.

• olympus 9y ago
  It's not actually a hot-button issue, at least not on the level of gender and race stereotyping. Claiming a difference based on birth order is more likely to elicit a "you're behind the times" type of response rather than a "you're a horrible person" type of response if you claimed a gender or race based difference. I don't think it should be ignored just because there are more hot-button issues that can be fixed- recruiting women and racial minorities into STEM is probably a better bang for your buck than trying to level out a 1 point difference in IQ based on birth order (how would that even happen?). Even though birth order has a low effect size, it would be nice to know why it happens and how much we could do to change it.