Middle children might feel like they’re often overlooked by their parents, but a recent study out of Brock University and the University of Calgary is putting them in the spotlight.
According to findings from a paper published last month by Michael Ashton and Kibeom Lee, psychology professors at Brock and U of C respectively, adults who grew up as the middle child — anyone with a younger and older sibling — are more likely to be agreeable and co-operative compared to the first- and last born, as well as only children. These personality traits were even more likely among middle kids from larger families.
While Ashton cautioned that there are likely many people who are exceptions to these results, he said the trend among the surveyed group was clear.
“If you had a person picked at random who had grown up as an only child and a person picked at random who grew up with several siblings, there’d be about a 60 per cent chance that the more co-operative person in terms of those personality traits would be the one from the larger family,” he told the Star.
The paper’s findings were based on two studies.
First, Ashton and Lee gave 700,000 people from Canada, the U.S, Australia and the U.K. a questionnaire created by the authors about 20 years ago that measures six dimensions of personality: honest-humility, emotionality, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness to experience. Participants were also asked if they were only children, or if they were the oldest, middle or youngest child.
This first part of the study found that middle children scored highest in agreeableness and honest-humility — a higher score in the latter means someone avoids manipulating others or breaking the rules — followed by the youngest sibling. Meanwhile, only children, along with the eldest sibling, were found to have a higher intellectual curiosity.
The professors then conducted a second survey with 77,000 people to see if family size also had an influence — which ended up being the case.
“Is this result where the middles are higher in these co-operative trades, is it mainly just due to growing up in a larger family?,” Ashton said he and Lee asked themselves after the results from the first survey came back. “And that’s why we did the follow up study.”
While Ashton said the study didn’t examine a potential explanation, he suggested middle kids are likely more co-operative because they have to constantly compromise with their siblings.
“It may not just be that you have to do that in the moment. It might actually have some lasting effect on your personality.”
As for why the researchers found only children were more curious, Ashton believed this could be due to them having to have more interactions with their parents and adults compared to people their own age.
“That might just be a more intellectually stimulating environment,” he said.
Ashton noted that the findings from him and Lee are unique compared to similar studies that have observed birth order is less influential. (He suggested this was due to a more in-depth survey and people being more motivated to be honest in their responses.)
Nina Howe, a professor at Concordia University who researches early childhood development and sibling relationships, believes it’s more about interacting with siblings in general, regardless of birth order.
“How do siblings communicate with one another? How do they learn to stand up for themselves? How do they understand the other one’s point of view? What are their social skills like? What’s their temperament like?” she said. “I think those things are more much more interesting to explain personality.”
A lot can change between childhood and adulthood, Howe added.
“I do think that early experiences are important, but it doesn’t mean that things are set in stone. There’s tremendous opportunities over a lifetime to change and develop and grow. So I think that’s important to keep in mind.”
