PS276 Lecture 4: Lesson 4 Ch.4
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Of course, for anyone with brothers or sisters, this is not such big news! Instead, there appears to be more evidence for non-shared environmental effects in these studies, factors which make siblings in the same family different from one another. Where could such non-shared environmental effects on personality come from: one possibility is from within the family itself. It is quite likely that parents treat each sibling differently within the family, and these differences may be important in shaping variations among siblings (e. g. , anderson et al. , 1994). It is also true that siblings typically have different experiences outside of the family (e. g. , different school experiences, different friends), and it may be that these non-family experiences are the most crucial in determining adolescents" differences from their siblings. While harris does allow that extremely bad homes may have a negative impact on children"s development, she believes that within the typical range, family environments matter little.
