Do you have brothers, sisters, or are you an only child?
Which of you do you think is the most creative?
Well, a new meta analysis of divergent thinking research just set out to find out what the science says.
Just published in the Creativity Research Journal, Birth Order and Divergent Thinking: A Meta-Analysis looked at the analysis of divergent thinking performance of 27 different studies, with 4,690 participants.
The studies aimed to investigate any links between birth order and creative performance.
And they did find a link.
The most creative siblings in general are…
…
…
First Born siblings.
The results show a statistically significant indicator that first born children have higher divergent thinking scores than their younger siblings, which is a strong indicator of creative performance.
The researchers don’t have definitive reasons yet for why this might be, but one reason could be that oldest siblings are often challenged with solving problems.
What do you think? Who is the most creative sibling in your family?
Nick Skillicorn
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Birth order characteristics is a fascinating topic. I come from a family of three boys so I have thought about this quite a lot. My intuition is –
first child – saddled with more responsibility, stronger tendency to follow rules
second child – in the shadow of the first, does not get the favouritism shown to the third
third child – the “baby”, gets coddled and can coast more.
Hence, I have already said the second child needs to make his own way the most, and thus needs to display more maverick tendencies. You can guess which number I am.
Oops – I meant to say “I have always said” in the last sentence