Sibling Differences in Empathic Style

Abstract

The present study proposed that empathy as postural inference may characterize second-borns, while empathy defined as verbal understanding of the role of another may be more characteristic of first-borns. The former is likened to Miller and Dollard's “matched-dependent” behavior, the latter follows the principle of “copying.” Results with males tend to confirm the superiority of the verbal-understanding type of empathy in first-born males, while second-born males are superior on empathy measures which rely on postural cues. Results for females suggest that superiority on postural inference is affected by the presence of a brother, not ordinal position, while superiority on empathy as verbal understanding is an accompaniment of having a sister.