Middle children are “better people” than their siblings

A study led by psychologists Michael Ashtona and Kibeom Lee from the Canadian universities of Brock and Calgary sheds light on a family debate that has intrigued for years: Does birth order really influence our personality?

The answer, according to their findings published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), It especially favors middle children.

Specifically, the research analyzed data from more than 710,000 people who had filled out profiles on a personality website, the HEXACO Personality Inventory, a tool that evaluates 6 key dimensions: honesty-humility, emotionality, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness and openness to the experience.

Middle children: more honest and cooperative according to data

The results showed that the middle children, those with older and younger siblings, They obtained the highest scores in honesty-humility and agreeableness, followed by younger siblings, older siblings and, finally, only children.

On the practical scale, This means that they tend to avoid manipulation, show little interest in wealth and luxuries, and are more likely to forgive and cooperate with others.

But there is more: The study found that the number of siblings also matters. The larger the family, the higher the scores on these positive traits. Researchers suggest a quite logical explanation: in large families, cooperation is not optional, it is necessary for daily coexistence.

“When you have more siblings, you should cooperate more frequently instead of acting according to selfish preferences,” Ashtona and Lee explain in their study, according to Live Science, suggesting that this constant need for cooperation could shape personality in the long term.

The researchers considered additional factors that could influence the results. For example, since religious families tend to be larger, they analyzed the religious factor, which explained approximately 25% of the observed differences. However, birth order and family size remained determining factors.

Birth order research: contradictory results

Despite the striking results, science invites us to be cautious. As pointed out Live Science, the field of birth order study is filled with contradictory conclusions and popular stereotypes ranging from the brilliant firstborn to the spoiled child to the mediating middle child.

For example, an analysis published in 2015 in PNAS already warned of this complexity: after 2 decades of research, the results ranged between strong correlations and the total absence of patterns, with the aggravating factor that many studies were based on limited samples.

The strongest evidence to date also does not support a clear influence of birth order. An investigation with 20,000 participants from three countries (United States, United Kingdom and Germany) found no significant correlations. For its part, the Talent Project, which followed 272,000 Americans, only detected a modest intellectual advantage in older siblings.

The most recent related studies also maintain this skeptical line. In 2020, research on narcissism found no differences between only children and those with siblings.

In this context of disparate results, Ashtona and Lee’s new analysis provides a fresh perspective with its large sample of more than 710,000 participants, although the researchers themselves acknowledge that more studies will be needed to confirm whether middle children really have these distinctive characteristics. .

Edited by Felipe Espinosa Wang with information from PNAS, Live Science, The Guardian and Phys.org.

Keep reading:

* Column by Dr. Nancy Alvarez: How to educate a child between seven and nine years old
* Column by Dr. Nancy Alvarez: What about the middle child?
* Learn to talk to a teenager so that he listens to you