Study reveals middle children are more honest, humble, and agreeable than their siblings

Many people on the internet believe that middle children receive the least attention in their families. They are also considered siblings who carry the least significance from their parents. However, a study suggests that not everything might be bad about being a middle child. The findings state that middle children might be better than their siblings in several aspects of their lives. The research was conducted by Brock University with the help of the HEXACO personality scales.

The study utilized six aspects of a human's personality: Honesty-Humility, Emotionality, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Openness to Experience. The study aimed to determine whether birth order can affect an adult's personality. Several studies prior had found no correlation apart from first-borns having a slightly higher intellect than the rest. The study maintained that hypothesis and found that people with more siblings tend to rank higher on honesty-humility and agreeableness. Both aspects were better in middle children and younger children. The researchers linked having a more agreeable and cooperative personality to growing up with more siblings. Among 700,000 participants from English-speaking countries, honesty-humility and agreeableness were the highest in middle children.

The middle children were followed on the scale by lastborns, firstborns, and only children. As per HEXACO, people who rank high on the honesty-humility scale are less likely to manipulate others for personal gain, have a lesser desire to break rules or seek lavish wealth or luxuries. They don't feel entitled to an elevated social status. Whereas people on the other end of the scale are more likely to indulge in flattery, do things for material gain, be more tempted to break rules for personal profit, and have a strong sense of self-importance in themselves. People who rank high on the agreeableness scale would "forgive the wrongs that they suffered, be lenient in judging others, be willing to compromise and cooperate with others, and can easily control their temper."

At the same time, people on the other side of the scale are more likely to hold grudges against those who hurt them, are very critical of others' shortcomings, defend their perspectives stubbornly, and are easier to anger. Middle children usually rank higher on the scale and thus have a higher chance of turning out to be better people as adults compared to their siblings. "A commonsense possibility is that when one has more siblings, one must cooperate more frequently rather than act on selfish preferences. This ongoing situation might then promote the development of cooperative tendencies generally," Kibeom Lee and Michael Ashtona, the researchers, wrote, according to Indy100.

"The weight of that evidence now indicates that personality trait levels do differ as a function of birth order and sibship size," the authors reiterated in the study, as per The Guardian. "You can’t tell much about the personality of a given individual from their birth order or family size, even though there are clear differences when averaging across many people," Lee went on. However, according to the study, if a person comes across someone from a family of six siblings and an only child, there's a 60 percent chance that the more agreeable person would be from the bigger family.