--- title: Birth Order Has Nothing to Do With Personality, Study Says description: Oldest children tend to score higher on intelligence, but other stereotypes on personality don't hold true. canonical: https://time.com/4074292/oldest-middle-youngest-child-personalities/ author: Tanya Basu article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-10-19T19:00:24.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:57:29.248Z article:section: Health og:title: How Birth Order Affects Personality Type og:description: Oldest kids have higher IQs, but do the other stereotypes hold water? og:url: https://time.com/4074292/oldest-middle-youngest-child-personalities/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb4a413e4b91db464/698868d30b72e30c826e663e/brady-bunch-personality-birth-order-oldest-middle-youngest.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2500 og:image:height: 1406 og:image:alt: brady bunch personality birth order oldest middle youngest og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: How Birth Order Affects Personality Type twitter:description: Oldest kids have higher IQs, but do the other stereotypes hold water? twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb4a413e4b91db464/698868d30b72e30c826e663e/brady-bunch-personality-birth-order-oldest-middle-youngest.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Birth Order Stereotypes May Not Be True > Sponsored content. 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Named editors include Richard Hall (The Brief), Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs (Inside TIME), Eliza Berman (Worth Your Time), Philip Elliott (D.C. Brief), Justin Worland (Future Proof) and Harry Booth (In the Loop). Health Matters is written by TIME's health desk. #### How do I sign up for a TIME newsletter? Go to time.com/newsletters, choose the newsletters you want and enter your email address. There is no cost and no subscription requirement. ## Video: The History of Birth Control [Watch (HLS stream): The History of Birth Control](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/4oCau3Jn.m3u8) (3:12)  _Published 2015-01-22. For as long as men and women have been having children, they’ve been trying to figure out how not to. Artifacts dating back to ancient times have shown that contraceptives have been used for thousands of years._  by [Tanya Basu](https://time.com/author/tanya-basu/)  ## Tanya Basu Oct 19, 2015 7:00 PM UTC  LOS ANGELES - FEBRUARY 9: Maureen McCormick as Marcia Brady, Eve Plumb as Jan Brady and Susan Olsen as Cindy Brady in the BRADY BUNCH episode, "The Subject Was Noses." Original air date, February 9, 1973\. Image is a screen grab. (Photo by CBS via Getty Images) LOS ANGELES - FEBRUARY 9: Maureen McCormick as Marcia Brady, Eve Plumb as Jan Brady and Susan Olsen as Cindy Brady in the BRADY BUNCH episode, "The Subject Was Noses." Original air date, February 9, 1973\. Image is a screen grab. (Photo by CBS via Getty Images) CBS Photo Archive / CBS—Getty Images  by [Tanya Basu](https://time.com/author/tanya-basu/)  ## Tanya Basu Oct 19, 2015 7:00 PM UTC Oldest kids are overachieving bossy types. Youngest kids are spoiled and use charm to get their way. They’re oft-repeated stereotypes about birth order and personality, but a [study](http://www.pnas.org/embargo?embargoed-uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pnas.org%2Fcontent%2Fearly%2F2015%2F10%2F14%2F1506451112) published Monday in the journal _PNAS_ reports that there may not be a whole lot of proof to back them up—at least not by the measures assessed by a team of German researchers. They looked at data sets that include 5,240 Americans, 4,489 British people, and 10,457 Germans because they wanted to compare people not only within their families but also with other sibling sets. Surveys included questions about a person’s birth order in addition to their IQ, their self-reported intelligence, and five standard aspects of personality: extroversion, emotional stability, agreeableness, conscientiousness and imagination. The researchers noticed that, in line with plenty of earlier research, oldest kids scored higher on intelligence tests, with slightly declining IQ as one gets further down sibling ranks. The rest of the data, however, showed weak statistical significance when it came to how birth order influenced those five measures of personality. This contradicts earlier research; the reason for that may be the fact that this study focused primarily on the big-five personality traits, which is different from how earlier research assessed the effect of birth order on character. In this study, however, no matter how the team tested the data—there were some theories suggesting age gaps between siblings might accentuate personality differences more, so the researchers tested significant age gaps as well as siblings who were closer in age together—they came up with a similar result. Julia Rohrer, a graduate student in psychology at Germany’s University of Leipzig and one of the authors of the paper, says that besides IQ, there were no strong connections between birth order and character. “It was surprising the results are so clear,” she says. One reason firstborns tend to have higher IQs might be because their parents are first-timers and are more prone to paying more attention to their only child and more likely to emphasize the importance of education. Rohrer says there also may be an element of a prophecy being self-fulfilled: a particular child exhibits a personality associated with their birth order, and then their siblings follow suit. While this paper does not, on its own, disprove the so-called birth-order effect, it does signal the need for more research. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4074292/oldest-middle-youngest-child-personalities/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4074292/oldest-middle-youngest-child-personalities/"},"headline":"Birth Order Stereotypes May Not Be True","datePublished":"2015-10-19T19:00:24.000Z","dateModified":"2026-08-04T07:57:29.248Z","description":"Does when you're born dictate what you're like?","url":"https://time.com/4074292/oldest-middle-youngest-child-personalities/","keywords":["Research","personality","Mental Health/Psychology"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb4a413e4b91db464/698868d30b72e30c826e663e/brady-bunch-personality-birth-order-oldest-middle-youngest.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Tanya Basu","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/tanya-basu/"}],"articleSection":"Health","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb4a413e4b91db464/698868d30b72e30c826e663e/brady-bunch-personality-birth-order-oldest-middle-youngest.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"brady bunch personality birth order oldest middle youngest","caption":"The Brady Bunch","creditText":"CBS Photo Archive / CBS—Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/health/","name":"Health"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/research/","name":"Research"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4074292/oldest-middle-youngest-child-personalities/","name":"Birth Order Stereotypes May Not Be True"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"The History of Birth Control","description":"For as long as men and women have been having children, they’ve been trying to figure out how not to. 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