Research suggests middle children are better people than their siblings

Middle children are more honest, humble and agreeable than their older and younger siblings, a new research study has found.

For years, people have argued over whether the birth order of siblings has an impact on their personality, future success and even love lives.

Often, the middle children in a family unit are considered the “overlooked” siblings who grow up to have “middle-child syndrome”, but research has suggested that they actually might turn out to be nicer people.

Research conducted by psychologists at Brock University utilised the HEXACO Personality Inventory to analyse six facets of personality: Honesty-Humility, Emotionality, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Openness to Experience.

The researchers found that middle children scored highly in honesty, humility and agreeableness.

According to HEXACO, those with “very high scores on the Honesty-Humility scale avoid manipulating others for personal gain, feel little temptation to break rules, are uninterested in lavish wealth and luxuries, and feel no special entitlement to elevated social status”.

Those who score very highly on agreeableness “forgive the wrongs that they suffered, are lenient in judging others, are willing to compromise and cooperate with others, and can easily control their temper”.

Middle children scored highly on both aspects of personality, and scores were particularly high among families with a lot of children.

“A commonsense possibility is that when one has more siblings, one must more frequently cooperate rather than act on selfish preferences,” Kibeom Lee and Michael Ashtona, the study’s authors wrote. “This ongoing situation might then promote the development of cooperative tendencies generally.”

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