The study, conducted by Michael Ashton and Kibeom Lee, psychology professors at Brock University in Ontario and the University of Calgary in Alberta, respectively, also discovered that people with more siblings generally exhibited higher levels of these cooperative traits.
They also found that birth order does have a small effect on cooperative personality traits, with middle and youngest children scoring slightly higher than firstborns.
‘Overlooked’ middle children often most cooperative, scientists find Having more siblings may promote development of more cooperative personality, researchers say.
For instance, Austrian psychologist Alfred Adler claimed that firstborns are responsible, the youngest are continuously pampered, and middle children often feel overlooked, developing certain traits in response.
The study found that middle children tend to score higher than their siblings on traits linked to cooperation, such as agreeableness and honesty-humility.
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