2. The Exquisite Balance

In a 1987 lecture entitled “The Burden of Skepticism,” astronomer Carl Sagan succinctly summarized the delicate compromise between tradition and change: “It seems to me that what is called for is an exquisite balance between two conflicting needs: the most skeptical scrutiny of all hypotheses that are served up to us and at the same time a great openness to new ideas... If you are only skeptical, then no new ideas make it through to you...On the other hand, if you are open to the point of gullibility and have not an ounce of skeptical sense in you, then you cannot distinguish the useful ideas from the worthless ones.”

Why, we might inquire, do some people prefer orthodoxy while others favor heresy? Is there a personality trait for preferring tradition and another for change? This is an important question because the answer helps to explain why in the history of science some scientists chose to support radical new ideas while others opposed them. In 1990 David W Swift published SETI Pioneers: Scientists Talk about Their Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, in which he identified an overabundance of first-born children, including Sagan.

It is significant that Sagan was an enthusiastic supporter of the idea that there are other intelligent beings in the universe besides man. However, at the same time he consistently opposed the idea of UFOs (unidentified flying objects), which many reputable scientists believed in. But is the number of firstborns among people who accept new ideas enthusiastically a statistically significant overabundance? Swift, a sociologist at the University of Hawaii, did not compute this, but University of California at Berkeley psychologist Frank J. Subway and the author did. Eight is the expected number of firstborns based on the number of siblings the SETT pioneers had, but 12 is the observed number. This difference is statistically significant at the 95 percent level of confidence.

So what? In Sulloway’s book Born to Rebel, he presents a summary of 196 controlled birth-order findings classified according to the Five-Factor Model of Personality:
Conscientiousness. Firstborns are more responsible, achievement-oriented, organized, and planful.
Agreeableness Laterborns are more easygoing, cooperative, and popular.
Openness to Experience. Firstborns are more conforming, traditional, and closely identified with parents.
Extroversion. Firstborns are more extroverted, assertive, and likely to exhibit leadership.
Neuroticism. Firstborns are more jealous, anxious, neurotic, fearful, and likely to group together under stress.

To evaluate Sagan’s personality, Sulloway requested a number of his friends to rate him on a standardized personality inventory of 40 descriptive adjectives using a nine-step scale between them, based on the Five-Factor model. For example, the author judged whether Carl Sagan was someone who was either hardworking or lackadaisical, tough-minded or tender-minded, rebellious or conforming, etc. The following results are in percentile ranking relative to Subway’s database of more than 7,276 subjects.

Most consistent with his firstborn status was Sagan’s exceptionally high ranking—88th percentile—on conscientiousness (ambitiousness, dutifulness) and his strikingly low ranking of the 13th percentile on agreeableness (tender-mindedness, modesty). This is the opposite of what we would expect from laterborns. But his openness to experience (preference for novelty) was nearly off the scale at the 97th percentile. Why? First, birth order is not the only influence on openness and can be affected by cultural influences surrounding a person as he or she grows up—Sagan was raised in a socially liberal Jewish family; and he was mentored by such scientific revolutionaries as Joshua Lederberg and H. J. Muller. Second, openness also includes an “intellectual” component, and firstborns tend to excel at intellectual pursuits, reflected by their higher I.Q. scores and a tendency to win more Nobel Prizes in science. Here is the key to understanding the exquisite balance between tradition and change: Sagan’s high degree of openness led him to be a SETI pioneer, but his high degree of intellectual conscientiousness made him skeptical of UFOs. Considering the example of Sagan, we can glean a valuable lesson on how science operates effectively in discriminating sense from nonsense, and it is science that helps us understand how and why this should be so.

Questions 1—8

Using the information in the passage, identify each characteristic described below. In boxes 1—8 on your answer sheet, write:
FB if the statement refers to firstborns
LB if the statement refers to laterborns
CS if the statement refers to Carl Sagan
CI if the statement refers to cultural influences
FS if the statement refers to Frank J Sulloway
Note: Each indicator may be used more than once.

Example Answer
His lecture dealt with tradition and change. CS
1. Swift discovered many of them among the SETI pioneers.
2. They are more ambitious than their siblings.
3. They are more sociable than their siblings.
4. He used the Five-Factor Model of Personality.
5. His personality was analyzed.
6. Birth order is not the only influence on openness.
7. They are less conscientious and agreeable.
8. His eagerness to experience new things was extremely high.

Answer: 1-FB, 2-FB, 3-LB, 4-FS, 5-CS, 6-CI, 7-LB, 8-CS

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