Birth order and civil disobedience: A test of Sulloway's "Born to Rebel" hypothesis

In Born to Rebel, F. Sulloway (1996) argued that, throughout history, later -borns have been more likely than first-horns to challenge the status quo. The authors tested Sulloway's hypothesis among a group of U.S. college stud ents who had participated in civil disobedience as part of a labor dispute. The authors predicted that there would be a higher percentage of later-bor ns among those who had been arrested than among a group of their friends wh o had not participated in civil disobedience or among a control group of st udents drawn from classes at the college. The findings, in fact, revealed a significant relationship between the number of times the students had been arrested and birth order.