Fraser, Chris, Peter and Nick discuss what sibling rivalry. What's it for?

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Hello and welcome to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast produced by Tell Me Studios for Aleph Insights. In this series of podcasts we take a look at interesting topics and discuss what we think they tell us about analysis and decision making. I'm Fraser McGruer, I'm here with Nick Hare, Peter Coghill and Chris Wragg of Aleph Insights, and this week we're discussing sibling rivalry. Nick, off you go.

Well we had some listener mail from loyal listener Mikey who says, dear Cognitive Engineering Podcast, long time listener, second time writer. So this is off the back of an email he wrote last week. He says, I didn't really want to know the answer. I only wrote to you because I knew it would make my brother jealous. He means if we read out his letter. He's had three of his emails read out on the excellent Futility Closet podcast and I haven't had any so I had a point to prove. This week I have another question, sibling rivalry, what's the deal with that? Now I don't have any brothers or sisters so I guess it's over to you guys to explain. Because he smothered them all when they were young. Yeah, the mould was

broken or your parents immediately realised what a disaster it had all been. Okay so in response to that, Peter or Chris, you've both, well hold on let's just check on this, who's

got siblings? So tell me Peter. Yes so I have a younger sister of two years. Okay, younger

by two years. Okay and Chris? Two older sisters. Two older sisters, okay nice mix. So I've got one older brother who's four years older than me but I've actually also got about nine half-brothers and

sisters. I think we've got every variable controlled for between us. Indeed we do. Okay,

who's gonna start us off? Yeah well I can sort of talk a little bit about you know my understanding of sibling rivalry in my own context. I mean it's presumably designed as a sort of benchmark for us against our... Well hold on, sorry to cut you off, before we go

into the sort of the theory of it, let's talk about ourselves. Are you rivals with your sisters?

No I'm not because A, we're different genders which I think makes a difference and B, they are sort of not substantially older than me but about eight years separates me and the youngest of my sisters. So from that point of view no but they are about a year and a half apart and so I witnessed sibling rivalry I suppose in its traditional form. And of course they're of the same gender as well.

Yes that's right. Peter are you rivals with your sister? I don't think so, I think we don't have a

particularly sort of competitive family unit I think because my sister and I always from very early on been very interested in different things. I've always been much more maths and science-y and she was always much more creative and horse riding-y and doing that sort of thing so I was yeah not so much. However I think maybe when we were much younger there was no doubt some degree of competition for sort of parental attention and approval and things. Okay so with myself and my

brother I thought that we weren't rivals and again we're quite different from one another and the four years is actually quite a lot as well obviously both boys so maybe that does feed into it but I thought we weren't until one year or this one time years you know he had just completed a master's degree in law and a master's degree in law is in LLM I think and and I think I can't remember if I had a masters that at that stage or not I don't know but he essentially says so basically that trumps your academic performance and I was well why is that this is well because mine's in law it's an LLM and everyone knows that and actually it's official LLMs are more prestigious than just your average master's degrees at which point I said well I don't want to do laws a load of rubbish anyway and it's so so turns out we were rivals and I didn't realize it. I suppose if we're

gonna start counting I did engineering my sister did acting at university. She obviously trumps

mine. I was gonna yeah I was gonna say the other way around but anyway I interrupt you Chris you

started going into this. I was just gonna sort of talk about a little bit about why sibling rivalry might exist as opposed to you know rivalry against other other people or how it's different to rivalry with other people or a rivalry with your parents you know without getting too sort of Freudian about it all but but yeah I mean I mean essentially they're the nearest thing we have in most cases to to genetic peers and I suppose it's a good way of benchmarking ourselves as to how you know we share approximately 50% of our our genetic material with a with a sibling and it's a good way of seeing whether our 50% or rather whether the combination of parental genes that we got is better than than our sort of nearest nearest competitor so I think that's that's one aspect and then I think you know there's also this aspect of competing for parental investment you know we're not we're not quite the stage of nudging nudging chicks out of the out of the nest as you know some bird species do but but there is this issue of vying you know we are a species which requires a lot of investment particularly when we're young children from those looking after us and you know there's an element of competing for the limited parental

resource available I think that's the the idea of it being limited is the key here because the genetic similarity would would always suggest that you would help and share like parents do with their own children you know the genetic similarity almost always leads to you know greater kinship more sharing etc so in a sense genetic similarity works would work against it so sibling rivalry has to be quite has to has to have quite a powerful driver in order to really to work so hard against genetic similarity that it causes us to potentially harm our siblings and and I think you know if you if you look at the comparisons between different types of different species and the kinds of environment resource environments they're in the the sort of general theory would be that it's emerges when you have when you have something that is intrinsically limited so competition for resources like in you know the birds I can't remember which I think it's an eagle of some kind you know black eagles they lay two eggs and one of them pecks the other ones are dead and you know because there really isn't much food coming in you know there's enough to raise one kid well and and you know it makes sense for the best kid to be the one that survives whereas you know animals like you know when you've got sort of animals with where they have a hundred kids and they all float off into the sea I mean they don't generally attack one another because actually resources are fairly abundant and there's no need for that much sort of parental input raising human children is very very resource intensive so you know that is a rivalrous resource so yeah I suppose I'm saying ultimately as with all things it comes down to economics

Peter I'm not convinced that there is a greater amount of sibling rivalry than there was with say peers and friends and in other places I I'm not convinced that there's more of it I think it might just be more apparent because there's an expectation of cooperation within a family and so so it's a it's a sort of it just stands out more as a perception thing because if you if you consider other cooperative organizations and social units like companies and where people go people go to work they are they are inherently sort of paternal and there's lots of rules and regulations but everyone's ultimately competing oh everyone's cooperating trying to do the best for the company but also competing for a limited set of resources in terms of prowess approval from seniors and pay so I think that's I think it's extremely common in any human sphere it just happened it probably just stands out more amongst those people you'd expect to cooperate

although I mean they I think I would agree entirely but there is a slight puzzle in that differences factors that you can look at among siblings influence rivalry so for example if they're close in age that's known and this you know measured through things like you know surveys amongst amongst different families and stuff that that's known to increase rivalry and apparently rivalry is worse between the sort of in early teenage years so it's affected by things that you know would those things explain stuff and those are kind of familial things but it might just be that that is still those things the influence of those factors is covered by a more general theory of rivalry so I think what Peter's sort of saying is that the same theory of rivalry covers sibling rivalry as well so it's not a special thing over and above just rivalry and rivalry tends to emerge as Peter said you know when you have competition of resources and some parity in inability you know so you know if you if you're but essentially both competing over the same market and if you have a large disparity in real life you know there tends to be a fairly stable hierarchy and you know you don't get that kind of rivalry rivalry emerges when you when you when you have someone who's roughly at your you know peer level yeah so I think a good a good

sort of example of that is wars for the succession for for succession in monarchies or you know dynastic sort of political systems where you know you you get siblings effectively competing for the one for the one position that they can occupy or sometimes you get you know rival rival candidates who aren't who aren't direct siblings but the same the same thing occurs that you get you get a struggle over a you know this this one single position that can be occupied and you know in the cases of where where that is determined by bloodline and siblings have equal claims or whatever it might be you know different different dynastic systems have have evolved and you know the the extreme ones are like the the ott the ottoman system where it was in enshrined into the system that the the successful or the rightful heir would indeed legally commit fratricide so so I think it was Mehmet the third the most extreme example murdered legally 19 of of his of his brothers so let's all be thankful that we weren't part of part

of that family but if you have but if you have a system based on primogeniture which is which is how the you know aristocrats become powerful essentially you there's no need to do that because you you get everything you know you don't if you're the if you're the eldest was Mehmet

the eldest was he going to inherit it anyway uh well so so I think the driver behind this was his grandfather uh had been involved in a bitter civil war with various siblings over this so so I think yes they they did have some system for determining you know the the eldest son but of course in a system where you've got you know harems might sound fun in in in principle but in practice if you've got plenty of siblings all of some of whom may have been born relatively close together because of uh having different mothers uh you you may have a less a less clear system and uh so this this process evolved I think I think hiring is probably pretty fun in

practice as well yeah but um anyway if you're if you're the owner rather than a worker well

it depends on the owner um anyway and one thing also so one one of the things you were talking about there is well what's the prize and if it's very very uh defined and and let's say singular in that case so the stakes are quite high but also I think another thing is um to do with the environment are the mechanisms in place or or to put it like this the parenting the upbringing as well so one thing I've read is that sibling rivalry will be higher in instances in a family where there's no mechanism for dialogue for example and so that the only way to get attention or to get ahead is is to fight or something like that whereas if the parents can put in place a kind of a family discussion or you can talk things through and then then that sort of reduces

instances of sibling rivalry um I mean I I saw that very thing actually uh yesterday yesterday evening occurring uh I was I was down on the the beach where I where I live and um there were he does actually live on a beach yeah I mean not not sleeping rough on the sand but but by by a beach yeah yes uh and um I was observing this uh this family uh and um this this lad who must have been about five perhaps he picked up a a large pebble and his uh his brother who was probably eight or so was lying down in a sort of pool of pool of water and he he just threw this large boulder at his at his brother at which point his brother stood up and and ran after him and uh you know shoved him into the into the sand and then start they both started crying at this point and the the parents who I you know I don't think there was that much parental investment up for grabs in this in this family shall we say you know then had to arbitrate between these two and it was it was classic attention grabbing behavior but but driven by by conflict and it was a you know a great manifestation of of uh not terribly thinking sibling rivalry yeah I mean it and that's this

is genuinely older than history in the sense that you know man man two killed man three uh cane cane killed able you know at least as far as the bible's concerned you know the second and third uh may never to exist you know one one murdered his brother there are other available sources of fact we should say yeah yeah but assuming that for the moment that the bible is historically accurate as a metaphor yeah and so clearly it's a big deal I mean you wouldn't get a story that you know that fundamental that that didn't express something important um and uh you know real life uh sibling rivalries are all over the place I mean you know ed ed and david midiband uh famous example the the gallagher brothers who else the other the chuckle brothers the chuckle brothers notoriously hated each other loved each other on screen and then there was that horrific murder wasn't there with the piano involving a pedal bicycle that was reversed backwards and forwards over uh yeah I should say that probably that just for legal reasons that the chuckle brothers are alive and well and there's no evidence that they there's any animosity between them or indeed that they're brothers are they actually I don't think they are brothers or

maybe they are I think they are actually I don't know uh look tempest fugit we're actually fairly close to be needing to wrap up um where how do we want to round this off well I suppose it speaks

to a broader question about uh genetics and behavior in general which is you know the extent to which you can um you can make uh judgments about the um the emergence of behavior based on uh a genetic a genetic drive and you know we've talked in classic terms we've talked about both sort of you know environmental constraints being at play here but also some uh you know deeper sort of dorkiness drive to to um to compete I'm not really I thought that was leading on to a no it wasn't I I suppose just that uh it's it's a it's a good example of um a a behavior and uh and the extent to which genetics determines that that behavior Peter I think the point that Chris

is meandering towards is that um we we we as a species have evolved uh and developed in an environment that's historically been very short on resources so we have sort of been pre-programmed in either our genes or or our behaviors that's panned down to to have this innate desire to compete with each other uh under with a sort of hard-coded assumption that everything every situation you meet is some sort of zero-sum game and if you you have to you have to if you get

something the other guy doesn't well I mean that's not I mean you know we've also evolved to cooperate for similar reasons that actually but it but it does involve a trade-off you know that's that's the thing at the end I suppose the interesting thing about humans is that we want to cooperate but we need to make sure that we're not cooperating ourselves out of a good deal

exactly and and um you know from from the point of view of uh sibling rivalry that's why there are examples of um siblings who hate one another but there are at least an equal number of uh examples of siblings that have very constructive relationships with each other and actually uh I

want to finish off with two points the first one being thinking back to my example of my brother and arguing about the relative merit of our master's degrees is actually I remember now that he actually funded my degree uh my master's degree because at the time he was earning very

well that's that's emasculating that's not empowering so not only has he got a better one but he paid for yours so he owns yours as well yes I was feeling positive about that

until five seconds ago yeah um but um and I paid him back but you know he helped me out uh that was my first point the second point is look let's just think for a moment um either in in literary terms in films or in history think of your favorite story of of

siblings well I watched uh Thor last night happened to be on the telly so that's a really nice example between Thor and Loki there's a sort of competition for the throne of Asgard and for the love of the parents and for the approval of the parents yeah yeah okay nice

uh Chris well I'll I'll um uh keep it uh mythical in that case and the the sort of three um the three brothers in uh in Greek mythology of um uh of Zeus uh Poseidon and and Hades and the the various ways they uh sort of project their sibling rivalries onto onto humanity you know and and the competitions between uh us mere mortals nice Nick I quite like the two brothers in um

in um much ado about nothing which who I think I'd called Don Pedro and Don John and uh Don John is he's the younger brother and he's he's a total shit and uh but he's really honest about it so I kind of I really respect the character he just sort of says look it's not fair I'm the younger brother he gets all the praise and the glory so obviously I'm going to behave like an ass so yeah big fan of him I can see that yeah um you model your entire existence on him

yeah um I can't think of a good one so um I shan't say anything I bet your brother could he's amazing that guy no he's not um so I got I've got one more thing we need to add to us

just at the end so in in the email that Mikey uh sent me uh asking about sibling rivalry he did say at the end could you say in your face Chris to my brother so but I think given that Chris is also a very loyal listener I will merely quote Mikey rather than actually saying in your face Chris

we consider him thus quoted okay um let's finish off there just to say what was that Mehmet III who murdered 19 of his siblings is that right yeah so I'm slightly worried we're sitting next to Nick Hare III that he claims to have no siblings but before we know there could be 19 a mass grave of 19 um hairs out there I don't know under the patio yeah okay gentlemen um that was very interesting so um thank you as always uh for listening to the Cognitive Engineering podcast I'm Fraser McGruer we've been here with Nick Hare, Peter Coghill and Chris Wragg uh thank you and until next time and and best wishes to Mikey and Chris best wishes to Mikey and Chris I hope they work it all out okay cheerio bye-bye