A team of psychologists, one from Brock University and the other from the University of Calgary, both in Canada, found evidence to suggest that middle children who grow up with more siblings tend to be more honest and cooperative than those who don’t have siblings .
In published work in the magazine Proceedings of the National Academy of SciencesMichael Ashton and Kibeom Lee describe how they analyzed data from thousands of people who filled out profiles on a personality site and what they discovered from this analysis.
Previous efforts to determine whether family birth order can be associated with general personality profiles have yielded mixed results. Some researchers have found patterns, while others have found no correlation or disputed the findings of others. For this reason, it is not yet clear whether such models exist. In this new study, researchers took a different approach, examining personality differences between children who grew up with varying numbers of siblings and those who grew up without siblings.
Prior to this study, the two researchers developed a categorization of six key personality dimensions: Honesty-Humility, Emotionality, Extraversion, Kindness (vs. Anger), Conscientiousness, and Openness to Experience (the HEXACO model). They also created a website where visitors could take a personality test based on this model. In the new study, they analyzed data from 710,797 people who completed this test on the website.
What have scientists discovered about middle children?
The researchers found that middle children (those with both older and younger siblings) scored highest on honesty-humility and kindness. In descending order, the following were: younger siblings, older siblings, and finally, single children with their parents.
Scientists have also noticed that the number of siblings a person grew up with influences personality: the more siblings a person has, the higher the scores for honesty and kindness.
What can we learn from this study?
The authors suggest that these results are logical: more siblings mean more trade-offs for everyone, leading to the development of kindness. Additionally, a larger number of siblings means that a lie is more easily discovered, which encourages honesty.
This study provides interesting insight into how family dynamics can influence personality traits, highlighting the role of socialization within a large family, writes Phys.org.
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Source: www.descopera.ro
