Invisible Influence (9 page)

And one way to differentiate is to find a different domain to pursue. Consistent with this notion, younger siblings tend to do better in sports. Not only are laterborns overrepresented among elite athletes, they're overrepresented among successful athletes in general.

One study examined the extracurricular activities of over 300,000 incoming college freshmen. Hundreds of thousands of kids at over 550 different schools. Everything from small two-year colleges to large, four-year universities. Though few of these students would ever compete at a national level, the study examined a more middling level of sporting achievement: receiving a varsity letter.

Turns out, good high school athletes tended to have older siblings. Laterborns were more likely to have lettered in high school.
⁶
Younger siblings were also more likely to spend time discussing sports with their friends.

Whether these lettermen (and -women) had one sibling or three or four didn't seem to matter. What mattered is that they had at least one older brother or sister. Firstborns were less likely to be varsity athletes and only children were even less likely.

Inter-sibling differences extend beyond academics and sports.
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Firstborn children tend to hold more conservative political and social beliefs. They're less likely to support abortion or endorse casual sex. Laterborns, however, tend to be more liberal. They're less likely to attend religious services and more likely to admit to cheating on a test or drinking beer in high school.

It's important not to overgeneralize from these relationships. Many of the differences, while statistically significant, are not huge, and they are averages, not rules. Many younger children
are just as smart, or even smarter, than their older siblings. Many older children are good at sports, and even better than their younger siblings. Some firstborns cheat on tests and some younger siblings are more conservative.

But, on average, there are differences. In fact, personality-wise, siblings end up being little more alike than any two people randomly plucked from the population.
⁸

Environmental factors have a big impact on personality. By some estimates, half of the variance in personality is described by one's surroundings. Some parenting styles may encourage children to be outgoing, while other styles may encourage kids to be neurotic.

But the data suggest that siblings may actually grow up in quite different environments.
⁹
The personalities of twins reared together, for example, are not systematically more similar than that of twins reared apart.
¹⁰
Adopted siblings grow up in the same household, yet their personalities are almost completely uncorrelated.
¹¹

Parents who feel like their children are as different as night and day might be onto something. One child may be an optimist, while another is a pessimist. One may be the life of the party, while the other is quiet and introverted.

These differences aren't random.

Sibling rivalries are more than just who is better at soccer or who gets the last scoop of ice cream. They're about who gets to be a certain type of person and who has to be someone else. Who is the funny one and who is the brainy one. Who is more like Mom and who is more like Dad.

Siblings encourage both imitation and differentiation. Kids often idolize their older brothers and sisters and end up tagging along to whatever activity they happen to pursue. If an older
brother is artsy, their younger sister may follow them to art class or spend more time at the craft shop. All driving the younger sibling to become like the older one.

But while imitation leads younger siblings down the same path as older siblings, they soon learn that this route is taken. It's hard to be the artsy one, funny one, smart one, sporty one, or any of another number of roles if one's older brother or sister already has it locked down. They're the artsy one, so it's not enough just to like art. You have to care that much more, know that much more, or try that much harder to unseat them and claim that domain as your own. Siblings are a salient point of social comparison, and always doing worse doesn't feel so good.

So unless the older sibling moves on to greener pastures, younger siblings often end up going a different way. Whether to stand out to their parents, or themselves, younger siblings try to create their own niche.

This is particularly true among siblings who are similar in age. In three-child families, thirdborns tend to be more similar to firstborns than they are to their next older sibling.
¹²
Differentiation also ends up being greater among same-sex than opposite sex siblings. Opposite-sex siblings already differ on one major dimension, making it easier for them to be similar on others.

Kids' personalities even seem to shift over time in opposition to their siblings.
¹³
As one child becomes more extraverted, another becomes more introverted. Like the proverbial yin and yang, as one moves the other moves with it. Forever connected, but forever striving for difference.

Siblings, then, serve an important function. They are playmates and confidants, allies and friends. But they also shape the
environment one grows up in. Both as role models and as points of differentiation.

“I think I learned a lot from her,” soccer star Morgan Brian said of her sister. “I saw her like soccer but not really pursue it. Maybe I wanted to be the opposite.”

Imagine you're buying a piece of art. You're not usually a big art buyer, but you happened to be walking past a gallery and the piece just drew you in. It's a stunning painting. A bit abstract, but with lush hues, beautiful lines, and gorgeous composition. Part of a limited set of fifteen from the same artist. It just speaks to you and the colors match perfectly with your living room.

A couple of days before you're supposed to finalize the purchase, you happen to drop by your neighbor's house for coffee. The two of you are fairly close friends, so you get together every so often to chat and catch up. He tells you about the vacation he's planning to Florida, you talk about your boss's penchant for falling asleep during important meetings, and the two of you trade opinions about which recent Hollywood blockbuster was best.

Then he brings up art. Heard you were thinking of buying a painting, he says. Before you close the deal on anything, you just have to see what I just bought. It's perfect! We spent forever looking, but in the end we couldn't be happier. I think you'll really like it!

And you do.

You walk outside, he opens the garage, and you behold his gleaming new piece. The very same painting you were going to buy.

Same artist. Same abstract shapes. Same beautiful colors. A couple small differences in layout, but it's basically the same piece.

What would you do? Would you still buy the painting you had in mind or would you look around for something else?

Scientists didn't run this exact experiment (buying paintings would get expensive), but they ran a similar study at a local microbrewery.
¹⁴

Two consumer psychologists posed as waiters doing a beer tasting. They offered groups of patrons sitting together the opportunity to sample one of four house beers: a medium-bodied red ale, a golden lager, an India pale ale, and a Bavarian summer-style beer. Patrons picked whichever one they wanted, and were given a free four-ounce sample to try.

Free beer? Most people were more than happy to participate.

After drinking the beer, customers answered a couple of questions: How much had they liked the beer? Did they wish they had chosen a different one?

There was one additional detail. Half of the tables went through the normal ordering process. The waiter gave them a menu, told them about each beer, and then went around the table, one by one, asking people which beer they wanted.

At the rest of the tables, patrons ordered privately. The waiter still gave them menus, and described each beer, but customers marked down their orders on scraps of paper, folded them, and handed them in so no one else could see what they had ordered.

The two ordering situations were almost identical. Everyone chose from the same set of beers and received the same information. The only difference was whether people knew what others had selected before making their own choice.

But when the researchers analyzed the data, they found a striking gap between the two groups. People who knew what others
had ordered were much less satisfied with the beer they chose. And they were three times more likely to regret their choice.

Why? Because many had switched their order to be distinct. They picked a different option than they would normally to avoid ordering the same beer as someone else.

Consider a group of three guys out for a drink. Paul loves pale ale, Larry has his eye on the lager, and Peter wants in on the pale ale as well. If they order privately, no one has any idea what the others ordered, so they just go ahead and choose what they want. Paul and Peter get the pale ale. Larry gets the lager.

But if they go around the table, announcing their order one at a time, those who order later can find themselves in a tough position. Paul orders the pale ale, Larry orders the lager, and then it gets to Peter. He'd like to order the pale ale, but given that Paul already picked it, Peter might feel weird about ordering the same beer. Just as you might not want to buy the same painting as your neighbor.

So Peter might pick a different beer, even though it makes him less happy as a result.
^I

Sometimes people don't want to be the same as everyone else. Sometimes people want to be different.

Today, professional baseball is a full-time job. In addition to playing over 160 games in 7 months, the off-season is filled with prepping for the next season. Some players lift weights to bulk up while others follow a strict diet in an attempt to slim down.
Squadrons of coaches, chefs, and exercise gurus design regimens to optimize performance.

But it wasn't always that way. Baseball didn't used to pay as much, so players had to put down the bat and glove during the off-season and find other ways to support their families. Hall of Famer Casey Stengel drove taxicabs. Pitcher Walter Johnson dug postholes for a telephone company. Shortstop Phil Rizzuto worked at a clothing store.

Yogi Berra had a job as a greeter and headwaiter at Ruggeri's, one of the best-known Italian restaurants in St. Louis. Even after he led the Yankees to win the World Series in the 1950s, Berra would don a tuxedo and greet patrons as they entered the restaurant in the off-season.

As salaries increased, players spent more of the off-season on baseball and less on their other pursuits. It wasn't worth risking an injury and jeopardizing their main paycheck.

Ruggeri's also changed. Elevated both by its reputation for good food and Berra's celebrity (even though he no longer worked there), the restaurant became more and more famous.

While the newfound fame was a boon for the restaurant's owners, others were less excited. Berra, for one, stopped going. When asked why by some of his friends, he replied, “Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded.”
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Traditional economics would suggest that what one person chooses shouldn't be influenced by what others are doing. Choosing art or buying a beer should be based on price and quality. So unless the artist tacks on a couple thousand dollars to the painting's price or the brewer starts watering down their beer, people's preferences should remain the same.

If anything, people should
imitate
others. Just like the people trying to guess how far a point of light moved in a dark room, others' choices provide information. The more people who picked something, the better that thing must be. Otherwise, why would so many people pick it? If popularity signals quality, people should pick whatever is popular. We should be more likely to do something when others are already doing it.

But that doesn't always happen. Just like Ruggeri's, people often avoid things when too many other people like them.

“Snob effects” describe cases in which an individual's demand for goods or services is negatively correlated with market demand. The more other people who own or use something, the less interested new people are in buying or using it.

Most of us don't want to be the only one doing something, but if too many people start doing it, we go ahead and do something else. When kale or quinoa becomes too trendy, there's a backlash. And when everyone starts talking about how dots are the new stripes, some of the initial dot wearers move on. Even if it means giving up something they like because others like it as well.

In some instances, the reason is rather practical. Restaurants aren't fun when they're too overcrowded. You have to wait longer to get a table or call further in advance to make a reservation. It's hard to enjoy your meal when you have to yell to be heard above the chatter.

But it's more complicated than that.

Talk to a music lover about a band that just became popular, and they might respond with a familiar refrain:
Asian Spider Monkey? I like their old stuff. Their early albums before they sold out and became so commercial. They had a more authentic sound then. It had more edge to it and was less poppy. It was more real
.

Now, it's possible that Asian Spider Monkey's early music
was truly better. While some artists mature, many run out of good ideas.

But how likely is it that the Beatles, Madonna, and many other successful artists actually sounded better before they became popular? Ever heard someone say they like an
unpopular
band's early stuff?

While it's possible that popularity is creativity-sucking kryptonite, there's a more likely explanation. Regardless of whether its music changes, when a band becomes popular, liking it makes people less unique. If you were one of the twelve bystanders who happened to catch one of Asian Spider Monkey's first coffeehouse shows, you're in a small, select group. No one had heard of them, so—unlike saying you like Dave Matthews Band or Beethoven—saying you liked the Spider Monkey's lilting, offbeat sound was a badge of distinction. People might have thought you were talking about
The Wizard of Oz
, or a weird primate infestation, but liking Asian Spider Monkey made you stand out. It might have been an infestation, but it was
your
infestation, and yours alone.