Risk attitudes and birth order

Abstract

Risk attitudes play important roles in health behavior and everyday decision making. It is unclear, however, whether these attitudes can be predicted from birth order. We investigated 200 mostly male volunteers from two distinct settings. After correcting for multiple comparisons, for the number of siblings and for confounding by gender, ordinal position predicted perception of health-related risks among participants in extreme sports ( p < .01). However, the direction of the effect contradicted Adlerian theory. Except for alcohol consumption, these findings extended to self-reported risk behavior. Together, the data call for a cautious stand on the impact of birth order on risk attitudes.