Scientists 'surprised' to find middle children have one big personality difference compared to their siblings
Middle children are often known as the most overlooked and adjusting ones, according to several stereotypes on the internet. However, researchers have questioned whether the order of a person's birth actually impacts their personality in any way. A new study found that there might be some truth to the commonly held beliefs, per the National Library of Medicine. The research explained that middle children might be the most cooperative and honest among all their siblings. There is a big personality difference in children from the same family, per HuffPost.
Both the birth order and the family size could impact a person's personality, per the research. Middle children were found to be more modest and cooperative compared to younger children, older children and only children. Kids from large families are also more likely to show these traits than people from small families. The study is important, as most other studies dismiss the influence of birth order on personality. Most of them also don't look at the impact of family size, according to psychology professor Kibeom Lee of the University of Calgary, one of the researchers of the study.
Lee, along with Professor Michael Ashton of Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario, used a HEXACO model to research people's personalities. It is a psychology framework that looks at six traits, including honesty-humility, emotionality, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness and openness to experience. "When we began collecting online personality data about a decade ago, we decided to include birth order in our survey. To our surprise, we found that some personality traits are also related to birth order, prompting us to explore these patterns further," Lee told the outlet.
The researchers collected data from two groups of people, including 710,000 adults and 75,000 participants from English-speaking countries, like the US and the UK. In the first group, the participants were asked to share their birth order and in the second group, they were also asked to share their family size and number of siblings. Age and gender were statistically controlled in the datasets to ensure they didn't influence the results. The professors also looked at the influence of religion on a participant's upbringing, as it is known to influence traits like agreeableness and honesty.
"We found that for two personality dimensions—Honesty-Humility and Agreeableness—middle-borns averaged highest and only children averaged lowest, with ‘oldests’ and ‘youngests’ in between," the researchers told PsyPost. People from larger families scored more on these scales compared to people who grew up in smaller families, showing the influence of the size of a family. "However, these differences were mainly a reflection of how many children were in one’s family when growing up—what researchers call 'sibship size.' (Note that 'middles' are always from families with at least three children, whereas oldest and youngest children are in many cases from families with exactly two children and only children by definition are from families with one child)."
"Many people are exceptions to these trends, but the differences in the average levels were clear," Aston pointed out, per The Brock News. "It may be just that you need to compromise and co-operate more when you grow up with siblings. Maybe this has a long-run effect on your personality, affecting your general inclination to co-operate." However, only children scored the highest in terms of openness to experience and intellectual curiosity, followed by the eldest children. "If you’re the only kid in the family, your intellectual environment is at a pretty high level and more stimulating because you’re interacting with your parents and other adults," the researchers suggested.