Middle children grow up to be more honest and cooperative than only children, study suggests
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A pair of psychologists, one with Brock University, the other with the University of Calgary, both in Canada, has found evidence suggesting that middle children who grow up with multiple siblings tend to be more honest and cooperative than children who grow up with no siblings.
In their paper published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Michael Ashtona and Kibeom Leeb, describe how they analyzed data for thousands of people who had filled out profiles on a personality website, and what they learned by doing so.
Results of efforts aimed at trying to find out if birth order in a family can be associated with generalistic personality profiles have been mixed. Some researchers claim to have found patterns while others have found none—and some have found fault with claims made by others. Because of this, it is not known if such patterns exist. In this new study, the researchers took a new approach—they looked for personality differences between children who grew up with varying numbers of siblings and children who grew up with none.
