Brian Sutton-Smith

Sibling Associations and Role Involvement

A persons experience of particular sibling associations might have a lasting effect upon his involvement in adult roles. This chapter reviews the evidence from several investigations dealing with the effects of ordinal position and sibling sex status on role involvement. The studies indicate that the effects of ordinal position and sibling sex status vary with age and with the nature of the variables being considered. Sex of sibling has stronger effects on adjustment, anxiety and interest inventories, and ordinal position has stronger effects upon mental abilities—with boys affecting girls more than vice versa, and first-borns affecting non-first-borns more than vice versa. In explaining the effects of different ordinal positions and sibling sex status on masculine-feminine role differences, the view has been taken that these positions and statuses are arbitrary phenomena, so that if systematic relationships are found, the problem is to locate the different types of learning experience involved.

The Cross-Cultural and Psychological Study of Games

to establish hypotheses about the function of games in culture, and then to proceed to psychological studies within our own culture as a means of testing these hypotheses. In the initial study, games were defined as competitive activities which always terminate in an outcome; namely, winning, drawing, or losing (Roberts, Arth, and Bush, 1959). Three classes of game: games of physical skill, chance, and strategy became the subject-matter of inquiry. Games of physical skill were defined as those in which the outcomes are

The Dramatic Sibling

It is proposed that because non-first-born children have less clearly structured roles than first born, they will show a greater interest in role exploration through drama. Second-born girls with an older sister (FF2), when compared with first-born girls with a younger sister (F1F), report significantly more participation in high school and college drama and are judged superior actresses by other F1F and FF2 viewing them through a one-way screen.

PLAY PREFERENCE AND PLAY BEHAVIOR: A VALIDITY STUDY

Studies are reported which compare childrens responses to the masculine and feminine items on a play inventory with ratings of the masculinity and femininity of their free play behavior. Systematic but indirect relationships are reported.

SIBLING DIFFERENCES IN EMPATHIC STYLE

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 Dollards “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.

A Structural Grammar of Games and Sports

cape, or acceptance and rejection, to games of attack and defense. Interactions of a more symbolic sort (tagging) give way to interactions involving direct and often forceful contact. Gradually these individual and team skill games themselves become transformed from mob-like aggregates to more differentiated games with specialized roles, a transition which takes place throughout adolescence (Sutton-Smith, 1971a). What we seek now is a more systematic way of discussing such changes. There is little systematic material on the possible lines of human evolution through games. Caillois has suggested a gradual shift from looser organizations towards more highly structured ones, from &dquo;mask&dquo; societies and play, to societies in which play is governed by rules (1962). Roberts et al. have argued a shift from physical skill cultures, to various combinations of physical skill, chance and strategy, with the more com-

The dramatic boy.

A sociometric investigation of role-playing competence in children of Grades 2 through 6 indicated that boys were perceived as better than girls, and girls with brothers as better than girls with sisters.