Comparative Essay On Sibling Relationships

1518 Words4 Pages

Sibling relationships has been an intriguing topic in developmental psychology for a long period of time. One of the interesting psychological phenomenon in this area of psychology is the environmental and genetic influences on sibling growth. These influences could be positive, such as the influence of success in their career; but some could be negative, such as the facilitation of alcohol use. In this comparative review essay, I will examine the similarities and differences between the popular press article Two Siblings, One Spotlight (Webber, 2011) and the peer-reviewed primary research article Genetic and Environmental Influences on Academic Achievement Trajectories During Adolescence (Johnson, McGue, & Iacono, 2014) that both address the …show more content…

The article consists of two main part: the statement of the theory and the examination of the examples. In the first portion of the essay, the author first explains what is super-sibling: they are the outliers among siblings because most siblings are very different when it comes to career path while they are not. These super-siblings are all successful in the same profession. She argues that this happens because of the environmental and genetic similarities between siblings. Specifically, similar environment gives super-siblings the day-to-day companionship, similar success-leading values and interests, and assistance to each other; similar gene let super-siblings acquire similar levels of intelligence, physical abilities and appearances. Webber employs four cases to convince us the reliability and validity of her claims. The first example of super-siblings are two successful psychologists – Susan Pinker and Steven Pinker. The author points out that because they grew up in the same environment and have similar levels of intelligence, Susan and Steven both have the ambition to ask question and examine them deeply, expose to psychology at early age, have the same psychology professor as neighbor and both babysat his kids, and even write about similar topics in psychology. She argues that these are the reason that made both of them successful in the same field. Similarly, Webber uses the example of successful musician siblings Gil and Orli Shaham, influential author siblings Sophie Littlefield and Mike Wiecek, and successful businesswoman twins Shivani and Neha Gupta to validate her claim by examining the similarity in growing environment and heritable

Open Document