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The effects of music amplitude on participants' response time to randomly presented, unexpected, visual events were investigated. Ninety participants completed a motor-reaction task without music and with music played at 60, 70, or 80 dBA. Males preferred more intense music than females did, with males selecting a comfort level of 72 dBA and females, 66 dBA. However, participants' reaction time and the total time to respond to a randomly activated red light were independent of gender. All participants responded more quickly when the music was played at 70 dBA (close to their comfort level) than when it played at lower (60 dBA) or higher (80 dBA) amplitudes. It is proposed that people may react more quickly to visual events (e.g., the sudden appearance of a plane on the screen of an air traffic controller, or the unpredictable activation of a car's rear brake lights when driving) with music playing at a volume preset to maintain individual comfort levels against other situational background noise.

This study examined the influences of birth order on behavior occurring in the initial, unstructured interactions of 40 mixed-sex dyads composed of a man and a woman who each had a sibling of the opposite sex. The design contrasted four different dyad types: (a) a firstborn man paired with a firstborn woman, (b) a firstborn man paired with a last born woman, (c) a last born man paired with a firstborn woman and (d) a last born man paired with a last born woman. Results indicated that individuals with an older, opposite-sex sibling were particularly likely to have rewarding interactions with strangers of the opposite sex. Relative to firstborn men, last born men talked nearly twice as long, asked more questions, and evoked more gazes, verbal reinforcers, and self-reported liking from their female partners. Relative to firstborn women, last bora women were more likely to initiate the interaction and to exceed the rate at which their male partners smiled. These findings are inconsistent with Toman's (1961Toman's ( , 1976) "family constellation" theory but are consistent with the results of various empirical studies that have also documented the greater social skills of later borns.

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