The debate on first borns being smarter than their siblings continues, as another research has also confirmed first-borns are indeed smarter than their siblings.
Researchers from the University of Illinois found that first-borns do have higher IQs and consistently different personality traits than their siblings.
The researchers however believe that the difference between first-borns and later-borns are so small that they have no practical relevance to people’s lives.
According to psychology professor Brent Roberts of University of Illinois, first-borns tended to be more extroverted, agreeable and conscientious and had less anxiety than later-borns but Roberts also believes that those differences were infinitesimally small amounting to a correlation of 0.02.
Professor of psychology, Rodica Damian of University of Houston who was also part of the study team states that the message of the study is that birth order probably should not influence your parenting because it’s not meaningfully related to your kid’s personality or IQ.
The study which analysed over 377,000 high school students is published in the Journal of Research in Personality.
This isn’t the only study to prove that first-borns are smarter than their siblings as a previous study by the National Bureau of Economic Research also suggested that first-borns are smarter than their siblings.
Phil