In RELATIONSHIPS; BIRTH RANK: EFFECTS ON PERSONALITY, Brooks

shares that personality evolves just as character and age evolve. He explains his reasoning
on how everyone in a family has different roles and expectations due to birth order.
According to Brooks, these roles and expectations are what molds a persons personality.
Following this hypothesis, he goes on to discuss how other more professional scientists
have found ways to prove the idea of personality and birth order. A study done by Walter
Tom, former professor of psychology at Brandeis University, used 3,000 people which
resulted in him able to make many conclusions supporting Brooks thoughts that birth
order and personality do correlate, yet the experiments process was not explained in
depth.
This source was a great resource because it gave me both an opinionated and
factual aspect to the topic. Brooks gave his thoughts but then backed it up with true facts.
The reliability of this article is very strong due to the fact that it was published in The
New York Times and references many well-educated professors from colleges such as
Brandeis and Georgetown. The topic of if birth order affects personality is a controversial
topic yet Brooks presented it in a way so that he believes in one side while still respecting
the other side to the research.
Overall, this source was a great source when needing to learn more about
personality in relation to birth order. Although lots of information was learned, the article
seemed to only skim the surface while not going into too much depth. To reiterate, the
article was helpful yet at points seemed to state the obvious. Luckily, this article did
include some helpful experiment results that will help with my research.
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In Status, Personality, and Gender Stereotyping: Response to Commentators,

Gwendolyn Gerber shares that personality is created through stereotyping among both
men and women. She believes that a persons social status is a key factor to how their
personality is perceived by other people. The main take away from this article was that
stereotyping has an important influence of the development of personality.
This article is absolutely reliable because Gwendolyn who is a Professor of
Psychology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice wrote it. Although, no statistics or
outside sources are used within this article and it is an opinionated piece. It is opinionated
yet has logical reasoning making the points justifiable.
This knowledge will definitely come in handy when talking about the
stereotypical aspect of personality because it has such a huge influence. This information
was very interesting with multiple great points that help strengthen my topic.
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In 90s FAMILY how Birth Order Stamps Personality, Howard explains her
opinion on birth order in relation to personality with the viewpoint of social influence and
stereotyping. In Howards opinion she mentions that there is not truly a way to find one
definitive answer to why every child has a unique personality. Although, she was able to
conclude that a variety of social influences affect personality with the most influential
being birth order. In addition, she does stereotype personalities that specific birth orders
tend to have while using herself as an example.
This source was definitely relevant to my topic because I was given more
stereotypes of birth order that had a strong tie to the other stereotypes I have learned
about previously yet from completely different people with different ideas. That just goes

to show that these stereotypes may not necessarily be true but seem to be global ideas.
This article is biased because the author flat out says her thoughts on the topic while still
maintaining credibility. This is credible because the author is a psychologist who deals
daily with situations involving this topic and even wrote a book outlining this topic.
In conclusion, this source was a great tool because the author focused on the
concept that each birth order looks at life from a different aspect. Almost as if the oldest,
middle, and youngest child all had a unique lens to look through each looking upon the
world in a different way. I really like this idea and will definitely consider it when doing
further research. The helpful thing about this article is that it gave me a new perspective
on a common topic (such as the example above) that I had never before considered.
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In The identification of birth order personality attributes, Nyman addressed the

issue that the correlation between birth order and personality has been both proven and
disproven causing it to be a very controversial topic. Therefore, he created an experiment
in which he would find if birth order tended to follow specific patterns relating to
personality. He explained his findings, which were gathered by getting 139 people to
describe each birth orders personality with 3 words, in this article. The oldest child was
described as independent, responsible, and caring. The middle child was described as
thoughtful, sociable, and rebellious and lastly, the youngest child as dependent,
ambitious, and dominant.
This article definitely seems to be credible due to the fact that it was published in
a journal solely about psychology. Although, this article was a little different from the
other ones I used because this one was not from a newspaper, but it still included many

facts and statistics making it objective. Being only objective was very helpful because
neither of my previous two articles were only objective so knowing that this article has
valid facts is great.
To conclude, this article will absolutely help me when working on my multigenre
project because it gives me a basis for how to actually understand the process of testing
the topic as to whether it is completely coincidental or scientifically proven. It mentions
an experiment with the same concept from a different article I read but this one went
thoroughly in depth into the process and steps to the experiment. Overall, this article was
very beneficial and provided me with some interesting statistics.