Academic

Aaron (Hank and Tommie), Brett (George and Ken), Conigliaro (Billy and Tony), Etc.: Sibling Behavior On The Diamond

By Tim Zinnecker

Readers with an interest in both baseball and sibling behavior may find interesting a recent article entitled Birth Order and Risk Taking in Athletics:  A Meta-Analysis and Study of Major League Baseball, published in the current issue of Personality and Social Psychology Review and co-authored by Frank Sulloway and Richard Zweigenhaft.  Here's the abstract:

According to expectations derived from evolutionary theory, younger siblings are more likely than older siblings to participate in high-risk activities.  The authors test this hypothesis by conducting a meta-analysis of 24 previous studies involving birth order and participation in dangerous sports.  The odds of laterborns engaging in such activities were 1.48 times greater than for firstborns (N = 8,340).  The authors also analyze performance data on 700 brothers who played major league baseball.   Consistent with their greater expected propensity for risk taking, younger brothers were 10.6 times more likely to attempt the high-risk activity of base stealing and 3.2 times more likely to steal bases successfully (odds ratios).  In addition, younger brothers were significantly superior to older brothers in overall batting success, including two measures associated with risk taking.  As expected, significant heterogeneity among various performance measures for major league baseball players indicated that older and younger brothers excelled in different aspects of the game.

I am unable to find a free-access link to the article.  But The New York Times discusses the article in this story.

Trivia question:  which trio of brothers aggregated the most career hits?  Click here for the answer.

Full post as published by The Faculty Lounge on May 26, 2010 (boomark / email).