This debate has been raging for more than a century. Does birth order help shape personality, or are conscientious firstborns and creative youngest children flawed stereotypes based on flimsy evidence?
After decades of controversy, some claims recent the study We found that there was little evidence of a meaningful difference. But in a study published Monday, psychologists pushed back, saying it does work after all.
In one of the largest studies ever conducted on birth order, family structure, and personality, Canadian researchers collected data from more than 700,000 volunteers and found that, on average, middle children are more important for cooperation. found that children scored higher than their siblings on certain characteristics.
Scores for the same trait were also higher in families with more children, suggesting that people may be more likely to develop a cooperative personality when raised as part of a larger group.
Although the influence is modest, Michael Ashton and Kibum Lee, psychology professors at Brock University in Ontario and the University of Calgary in Alberta, found that birth order and the number of children raised together have significant implications for personality. I think this is challenging the idea that it does not have certain effects. .
“The weight of the evidence indicates that levels of personality traits vary as a function of birth order and sibling size,” they write. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Researchers have speculated about the effects of birth order for more than a century. In 1874, Francis Galton, the youngest of nine children and a polymath, collected a history of a group of British scientists. Most were first born. He thought that the eldest son might have received more attention from his parents and pushed them to greater intellectual heights.
Decades later, Austrian psychologist Alfred Adler argued that firstborns are often conscientious and responsible, while youngest children may become independent and creative as they seek ways to stand out. . He saw middle children as peacemakers, while others saw them as the “forgotten children”, the often overlooked Lisa Simpsons.
Ashton and Lee analyzed personality traits reported by more than 700,000 English speakers, including details on whether they were first-born siblings, middle children, youngest children, or only children. Another group of 75,000 volunteers answered the same questions, along with the number of children they were co-parenting with.
Previous studies have found evidence that firstborns are slightly smarter than later-born children, and the Canadian study confirmed the same. But the researchers found another difference. People with more siblings tend to score higher on two traits related to cooperation: agreeableness and what scientists call honesty-humility, or the tendency to be fair and honest with others. did. Middle children seemed to receive an extra boost, scoring slightly higher than their first and youngest siblings.
The findings suggest that if an only child and an only child are randomly selected from a family of six, there is a 60% chance that the family of six will be more harmonious. “Birth order and family composition don't tell us much about a particular individual's personality, even if there are clear differences when averaged across many people,” Lee says.
Although the number of siblings was the main factor shaping personality traits, birth order was also important. “These differences are primarily explained by the size effects of the sibling ships,” Ashton said. “However, birth order differences cannot be fully explained by the number of siblings alone. This suggests that there is also a small birth order effect on cooperative personality traits, with middle-aged and youngest averages being the lowest. It shows that it is slightly higher than the older age group.”
If the effect is real, the authors write, the factors could be intuitive. While having many siblings fosters a more cooperative personality, being a middle child requires good bonds with younger siblings.
