First Born Children are Usually Cleverer Than Their Siblings

 

First borns HEYAAAA. Science has got some really good news for you, because new research has shown that you've probably got the highest IQ of all your brothers and sisters. ?

 

Yeah, so less great news for everyone else, because the study also shows that every successive child in the family has a lower IQ than the last. Making the youngest the least intelligent in theory. Soz.

 

Can we please take a moment to remind you how much you love your siblings? Deep down. That deep sibling love. Because we have a feeling there is going to be some pretty passive aggressive sharing of this article and we don't want to cause any family feuds. Blame science, not us.

 

The study, carried out by the University of Leipzig, analysed data from three national studies (including one from the UK), looking at more than 20,000 people in total.

 

Looking at IQ and personality tests, the results showed that there was a clear drop of around 1.5 IQ points for each younger sibling and an even greater drop in their own feelings of how clever they were.

 

"One theory is that following children 'dilute' the resources of their parents," explained co-author of the research, Julie Rohrer. "While the firstborn gets full parental attention, at least for some months or years, late-borns will have to share from the beginning."

 

She added: "Another possible factor is described by the tutoring hypothesis: A firstborn can 'tutor' their younger siblings, explaining to them how the world works and so on.

 

"Teaching other people has high cognitive demands – the children need to recall their own knowledge, structure it and think of a good way to explain it to younger siblings, which could provide a boost to intelligence for some firstborns."

 

Oh, also, there was no evidence to suggest that younger siblings are any more extroverted or funny, so they've really ripped any kind of silver lining out of this. Great.

 

But HEY, there are lots of great things about having siblings, right?