It's awfully hard to resist the charms of someone who can make you laugh, and families abound with stories of last-borns who are the clowns of the brood, able to get their way simply by being funny or outrageous. Birth-order scholars often observe that some of history's great satirists--Voltaire, Jonathan Swift, Mark Twain--were among the youngest members of large families, a pattern that continues today. Faux bloviator Stephen Colbert--who yields to no one in his ability to get a laugh--often points out that he's the last of 11 children.

Such examples might be little more than anecdotal, but personality tests show that while firstborns score especially well on the dimension of temperament known as conscientiousness--a sense of general responsibility and follow-through--later-borns score higher on what's known as agreeableness, or the simple ability to get along in the world. "Kids recognize a good low-power strategy," says Sulloway. "It's the way any sensible organism sizes up the niches that are available."

Even more impressive is how early younger siblings develop what's known as the theory of mind. Very small children have a hard time distinguishing the things they know from the things they assume other people know. A toddler who watches an adult hide a toy will expect that anyone who walks into the room afterward will also know where to find it, reckoning that all knowledge is universal knowledge. It usually takes a child until age 3 to learn that that's not so. For children who have at least one elder sibling, however, the realization typically comes earlier. "When you're less powerful, it's advantageous to be able to anticipate what's going on in someone else's mind," says Sulloway.

Later-borns, however, don't try merely to please other people; they also try to provoke them. Richard Zweigenhaft, a professor of psychology at Guilford College in Greensboro, N.C., who revealed the overrepresentation of firstborns in Congress, conducted a similar study of picketers at labor demonstrations. On the occasions that the events grew unruly enough to lead to arrests, he would interview the people the police rounded up. Again and again, he found, the majority were later- or last-borns. "It was a statistically significant pattern," says Zweigenhaft. "A disproportionate number of them were choosing to be arrested."

This incredible video called "Web 2.0... the Machine is Us/ing Us," is deeply moving and incredibly smart. The creator is Michael Wesch, an assistant Cultural Anthropology Prof at Kansas State U, and he has strung together a bunch of animations, text, and screenshots in order to tell the story of "Web 2.0" -- and why it matters, and how it's changing the world. Link

Local high-quality mirror of Web 2.0 ... the Machine is Us/ing Us

The war between the Handa clan and the Ombal clan began many years ago; how many, Daniel didn't say, and perhaps didn't know. It could easily have been several decades ago, or even in an earlier generation. Among Highland clans, each killing demands a revenge killing, so that a war goes on and on, unless political considerations cause it to be settled, or unless one clan is wiped out or flees. When I asked Daniel how the war that claimed his uncle's life began, he answered, "The original cause of the wars between the Handa and Ombal clans was a pig that ruined a garden." Surprisingly to outsiders, most Highland wars start ostensibly as a dispute over either pigs or women. Anthropologists debate whether the wars really arise from some deeperlying ultimate cause, such as land or population pressure, but the participants, when they are asked to name a cause, usually point to a woman or a pig. Any Westerner who knows the story of Helen and the Trojan War will not be surprised to hear women named as a casus belli, but the equal importance of pigs is less obvious. However, New Guinea Highlanders, whose main food staples are starchy root crops like sweet potato and taro, are chronically starved for protein, of which the island's dark, bristly pigs traditionally furnished the only large source. As a result, pigs are prized symbols of prestige and wealth. Peaceful competition and ostentatious displays involve pigs, and they are also used as currency for buying women. Pigs are individually owned and named, and, as piglets, they are sometimes nursed at one breast by a woman nursing an infant at her other breast.

Then what, I ask Stratyner, do the most distressed rich kids fantasize about when it comes to their family money? That they didn't have it?

"Rarely," he answers. "They're not stupid."

Having less?

"No, not really."

So what, then?

He thinks for a long moment, then finally gives an answer. "That they'd made it themselves."

...

It turns out there's research to back up their hand-wringing. Writing in the American Journal of Psychiatry in 1981, George Vaillant, a Harvard psychiatrist who's spent the bulk of his career devoted to the study of adult resilience and coping, argued that childhood capacity for work is one of the best predictors of adult mental health and the capacity to love. He based his conclusion on a famous longitudinal study of 456 young men from inner Boston who, starting in the forties, were followed beginning at age 14. All came from blue-collar and welfare families, and none, at least at the time of their selection, had juvenile records. The subjects were assigned ratings for their ability to work as teenagers—in school, at home, in jobs outside the home, in extracurricular pursuits—and they were reinterviewed at several intervals since, at ages 25, 31, 47. The outcomes were pretty stark. Those who demonstrated the greatest capacity for work as 14-year-olds were five times more likely to be paid well for their work at 47 than those who scored lowest, and sixteen times less likely to have experienced unemployment—and intelligence, Vaillant was careful to note, did little to mediate the latter outcomes. They were also twice as likely to have warm relations with a wide variety of people and almost twice as likely to still be enjoying their first marriages. But perhaps the most striking datum was what Vaillant wryly called a "value-free definition of health": Those who had the poorest ratings were six times as likely, at age 47, to be dead.

But here's a question: How do you drum a work ethic into those who, strictly speaking, don't have to work?

Though if your biggest problem in life is you're not happy that you didn't earn what you've got, you've got very little to complain about, not to mention that this "problem" would be really easy to fix: sell your mansion, fancy car and whatever else you've got and empty out your bank account and give it all away. Give the opportunity you've had to someone else who otherwise wouldn't have it because they didn't have the dumb luck of being born into a family with money.

I find it interesting, but not surprising, that intelligence has little bearing on the subjects' later outcomes, but that their ability to work was a striking indicator of success both both financially and physically.

I've noticed quite often that kids don't look where they're going. I live in New York, and will often see kids just barrel through a crowd of people coming the opposite way, without moving to let people pass or really doing anything to acknowledge that there are obstacles to their forward momentum. They just don't do that street shuffle that we all know so well. They'll also point to things in stores without acknowledging other people's presence, possibly thwacking passersby in the shoulders or nose, until their parents remind them that there are people around and they should watch out.

Yup, all the responses confirm what I've thought all along: kids are generally oblivious of the world around them and concepts like "personal space" just don't exist.

Psychology Today talks with psychologist Robert Epstein about his book, The Case Against Adolescence:

In every mammalian species, immediately upon reaching puberty, animals function as adults, often having offspring. We call our offspring "children" well past puberty. The trend started a hundred years ago and now extends childhood well into the 20s. The age at which Americans reach adulthood is increasing -- 30 is the new 20 -- and most Americans now believe a person isn't an adult until age 26.

Epstein says the infantilization of adolescents creates a lot of conflict and isolation on both sides of the divide. Over at Marginal Revolution, economist Tyler Cowen adds:

The problem, of course, is that a contemporary wise and moderate 33 year old is looking to climb the career ladder, find a mate, or raise his babies. He doesn't have a great desire to educate unruly fifteen year olds and indeed he can insulate himself from them almost completely. He doesn't need a teenager to carry his net on the elephant hunt. Efficient capitalist production and rising wage rates lead to an increased sorting by age and the moral education of teens takes a hit.

What is introversion?

In its modern sense, the concept goes back to the 1920s and the psychologist Carl Jung. Today it is a mainstay of personality tests, including the widely used Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Introverts are not necessarily shy. Shy people are anxious or frightened or self-excoriating in social settings; introverts generally are not. Introverts are also not misanthropic, though some of us do go along with Sartre as far as to say "Hell is other people at breakfast." Rather, introverts are people who find other people tiring.

Extroverts are energized by people, and wilt or fade when alone. They often seem bored by themselves, in both senses of the expression. Leave an extrovert alone for two minutes and he will reach for his cell phone. In contrast, after an hour or two of being socially "on," we introverts need to turn off and recharge. My own formula is roughly two hours alone for every hour of socializing. This isn't antisocial. It isn't a sign of depression. It does not call for medication. For introverts, to be alone with our thoughts is as restorative as sleeping, as nourishing as eating. Our motto: "I'm okay, you're okay-in small doses."

Surprisingly, I agree with a great portion of the article. I'm an INTP, last time I checked.

The pace at which city dwellers walk has increased by 10 per cent in the last decade, a new study has shown.

The findings, from 32 countries, reflect the fact that increasing numbers of people are living in the fast lane.

Teams with stop watches timed how long it took 35 men and women to walk along a 60ft stretch of pavement.

Comparing the results with those compiled by US psychologist Professor Robert Levine in the 1990s, the study showed that people were, on average, now walking 10 per cent faster. Men are generally 25 per cent quicker on their feet than women.

They also note that New Yorkers aren't as fast as the stereotype makes them out to be.