Frank Jones Sulloway (born February 2, 1947) is an American psychologist and historian of science. He is a visiting scholar at the Institute of Personality and Social Research at the University of California, Berkeley and a visiting professor in the Department of Psychology. After finishing secondary school at Moses Brown School in Providence, Rhode Island, Sulloway studied at Harvard College and later earned a PhD in the history of science at Harvard. He was a visiting scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
He is known for his books, Freud, Biologist of the Mind (1979), which placed Freud and psychoanalysis in their historical and scientific contexts, and Born to Rebel (1996), which argued that birth order exerts large effects on personality. In Born to Rebel, Sulloway claimed that birth order had powerful effects on the Big Five personality traits. He argued that firstborns are more conscientious and socially dominant, less agreeable, and less open to new ideas than are laterborns, who were "born to rebel". However, critics such as Fred Townsend, Toni Falbo, and Judith Rich Harris, dispute Sulloway's theories. A full issue of Politics and the Life Sciences, dated September, 2000 but not published until 2004 due to legal threats from Sulloway, contains carefully and rigorously researched criticisms of Sulloway's theories and data. Subsequent large independent multi-cohort studies have revealed approximately zero-effect of birth order on personality.
His grandfather was the tennis player and attorney Frank Sulloway (1883–1981).
Awards
- 1980 Pfizer Award
- 1984 MacArthur Fellows Program
Books
- Freud, Biologist of the Mind: Beyond the Psychoanalytic Legend. New York: Basic Books. 1983 . ISBN 0233971777.
- Born to Rebel: Birth Order, Family Dynamics, and Creative Lives. Pantheon. 1996. ISBN 0679442324.
- Darwin and His Bears: How Darwin Bear and His Galápagos Islands Friends Inspired a Scientific Revolution. Blast Books. 2021. ISBN 978-0922233519.
References
- "Sulloway, Frank J.". Current Biography Yearbook. New York; Dublin: The H. W. Wilson Company. 1997. pp. 548–551. ISBN 978-0-8242-0938-4. OCLC 1029043674.
- "IPSR Directory: Faculty". ipsr.berkeley.edu. Institute of Personality and Social Research. Archived from the original on 2010-06-14. Retrieved 2015-03-30.
- "Details for: Frank J Sulloway". calnet.berkeley.edu. UC Regents. Archived from the original on 2014-12-21. Retrieved 2015-03-30.
- "Cupola spring 2012: What's Ahead?".
- "Born Rebels". PaulaGordon.com. The Paula Gordon Show. Retrieved 2015-03-30.
- "Frank Sulloway". www.macfound.org. Retrieved 2024-10-03.
- Sulloway, F.J. (2001). Birth Order, Sibling Competition, and Human Behavior. In Paul S. Davies and Harmon R. Holcomb, (Eds.), Conceptual Challenges in Evolutionary Psychology: Innovative Research Strategies. Dordrecht and Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers. pages 39–83. "Full text" (PDF). (325 KB)
- Harris, Judith Rich (2006), No Two Alike: Human Nature and Human Individuality (pages 107–112)
- Rohrer, Julia M.; Egloff, Boris; Schmukle, Stefan C. (2015-11-17). "Examining the effects of birth order on personality". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 112 (46): 14224–14229. Bibcode:2015PNAS..11214224R. doi:10.1073/pnas.1506451112. ISSN 0027-8424. PMC 4655522. PMID 26483461.
- "Guide to the Alvah Sulloway Papers, 1836–2006" (PDF). New Hampshire Historical Society.
- "Frank Sulloway – MacArthur Foundation". www.macfound.org. Retrieved 2018-08-12.
