If you’re a middle child, you may want to keep the results of a recent scientific study to yourself. Your siblings may not want to hear that you’re more honest, humble and agreeable than them. But perhaps they already know that.
The study, exploring whether personality traits are connected to birth order and family size, was conducted by two Canadian researchers, Michael Ashton of Brock University and Kibeom Lee of the University of Calgary.
Disclaimer: I am not a middle child. As such, I have no vested interest in glorifying the personalities of middle children. My parents had two children. My sister was first and she was a delight. I was second and gave them a fright. When they took me home from the hospital, they also took home a pamphlet on birth control.
In their research, Ashton and Lee analyzed data from two large samples, totaling almost 800,000 English-speaking participants from countries such as the United States, Canada, Australia and Great Britain. As reported in PsyPost, an independent science news website, the research found that “middle-born participants scored highest on Honesty-Humility and Agreeableness, traits that reflect modesty, fairness, and cooperative behavior.”
I’m not a scientist, but this makes a lot of sense to me. To explore my theories on how humility, honesty and agreeableness are instilled in middle-born children, let’s imagine three siblings: Anita, the oldest child, is two years older than Priyanka, the middle child, who is two years older than Raj, the youngest.
Humility: Priyanka is humble because she is always behind Anita in development. When Anita is walking, Priyanka is crawling. When Anita is eating off a plate, Priyanka is under her mom’s shirt. When Anita is learning to jump and skip, Priyanka is learning to bump and trip. Not only is Priyanka behind Anita in development, she’s also behind in style. She’s always getting Anita’s hand-me-down dresses.
Honesty: Before Priyanka learns to talk, Anita does all the talking. “Who broke the vase?” their mother asks and Anita is quick to respond: “Priyanka did. She’s a bad girl.” Priyanka quickly learns what it’s like to be on the receiving end of injustice. Even if she wants to be dishonest, she can’t pull it off as easily as Anita, who has two more years of practical experience.
Agreeableness: When Priyanka enters the world, she already has competition for her parents’ attention and everything else in the household. When she asks to use the kitchen play set that Anita has been using exclusively, Anita says, “Okay, but you have to agree to this condition: I am the executive chef and you are the chef’s assistant. You have to put all the utensils and food back where you got them, and no eating on the job!”
At this point, you may be wondering: what about Raj? Well, Raj isn’t as humble as Priyanka because he doesn’t get any hand-me-down dresses. Even if he wore dresses, they’d be too old and worn by the time they reached him. Besides, Mom and Dad are eager to spoil their youngest child, especially since they’re both more advanced in their careers now and can afford to treat him like a prince. Raj quickly learns that he doesn’t need to be agreeable. He just needs to learn how to wrap his parents around his little finger. But Raj doesn’t get too full of himself, thanks to having two older sisters who keep him grounded by regularly making fun of him.
The Canadian researchers found that youngest children scored lower than middle children in the honesty, humility and agreeableness traits, but higher than oldest children.
Who scored the lowest? Only children (those with no siblings). An only child named Vinod, for example, enjoys the full love and attention of his parents and has no reason to be humble or agreeable. As for honesty, Vinod soon realizes that when his parents are not around, there are no other eyewitnesses to snitch on him.
“Who broke the vase?” his mother asks and Vinod is quick to respond: “Dad did! He’s a bad boy.”
Dad is shocked and denies the charge. It’s his word against his son’s, and who is Mom going to believe?
Her precious son, of course.
