Birth Order and Their Impacts on Individual Cooperativeness in Adulthood: An Experimental Study among Buryats of Eastern Siberia

Abstract

In the current study, we have investigated individual cooperativeness and its association with parameters of the family composition among Buryats of Eastern Siberia. The experimental design was based on economic games (“Public Goods Game”, “Prisoner’s Dilemma”), which allowed quantitative assessment of individual cooperativeness. The results have shown that Buryat men originating from larger families (≥ 4 children in a family) were more cooperative in group interactions, whereas men that were the single child in a family demonstrated self-oriented behavior. Among females, cooperative behavior was principally influenced by the position among the siblings: Buryat women who were the first child in a family (elder sisters) were the less cooperative ones. The outcome of the study demonstrates that socialization within the family has a significant impact on formation of individual and sex-specific differences in pro-social attitudes in adult ages.