According to a recent study, middle children are more cooperative than their siblings, defying long-held beliefs about birth order. Particularly in larger families, researchers discovered that middle children performed better on cooperation-related traits.
For more than a century, people have been debating personality traits and birth order. Are youngest children naturally more creative, and are firstborns actually more diligent? Or are these preconceptions supported by weak and antiquated evidence?
Following decades of contradictory theories, some recent research has disproved the notion that personality is strongly influenced by one’s birth order. However, according to a novel new study published recently, birth order may actually have an impact on some personality traits, specifically cooperation.
Middle Kids Are Excellent at Cooperation
In what is thought to be one of the largest studies on personality and birth order ever conducted, Canadian researchers collected data from over 700,000 participants. According to the results, middle children generally outperformed their older and younger siblings in characteristics that are essential for cooperation, such as agreeableness and honesty-humility.
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A more cooperative personality may be fostered by growing up in a larger family, as the study also reveals that those from larger families typically score higher on these traits. The study contradicts the conventional wisdom that the number of siblings and birth order have little bearing on personality development, despite the fact that the differences are not particularly noticeable.
How Family Size Shapes Personality
According to the study’s researchers, psychologists Michael Ashton of Brock University and Kibeom Lee of the University of Calgary, these findings provide strong proof that personality traits do vary by sibling count and birth order. They examined data from two sizable volunteer groups for the study. In the first, over 700,000 volunteers who spoke English provided information about their birth order, including whether they were the youngest, middle child, only child, or firstborn. Additional information on family size was obtained from a second smaller group of 75,000 volunteers.
According to the findings, middle children appeared to perform better than both their older and younger siblings in terms of cooperative traits, even though firstborns typically scored higher on intelligence tests. Fairness and agreeableness, two qualities that are essential to a cooperative personality, were slightly higher among middle children.
Middle Children are The Co-operative Peacemakers
This study expands on earlier hypotheses about how siblings influence a person’s personality. In his research on birth orders, psychologist Alfred Adler believed that middle children were the ones who brought harmony to the household. Youngest children may aspire to be independent and creative thinkers, while firstborns may aspire to be capable, responsible leaders. The middle children fell somewhere between these two categories of siblings.
Because of their special place in the family dynamic, middle children may actually be more cooperative, according to this new research, which supports Adler’s theory. They frequently have to strike a balance between the needs of their older and younger siblings, which helps them develop negotiation and compromise skills.
Middle Children and Cooperation: Why Birth Order Matters
The number of siblings is the most important factor, even though the study shows that birth order does affect cooperative traits. Growing up in a larger family likely forces people to acquire more cooperative traits in order to survive the dynamics of a larger group, according to Ashton and Lee. According to Lee, having more siblings tends to make a person more amiable and equitable. However, there are special advantages and difficulties associated with being the middle child, which seem to enhance cooperative behaviors.
While personality differences are not significant, research suggests that a person’s cooperative nature is influenced subtly but noticeably by the environment that their birth order and family size create.