A fascinating article in The Huffington Post debunks the myth, so dearly held by so many, that birth order impacts personality.  Two recent large-scale, international studies (here and here) found no relationship between birth order and five primary personality traits (openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness and neuroticism). In fact, the only known effect that birth order has on people is IQ, specifically, IQ tends to decline with each subsequent child (please don’t use this fact against your younger siblings!).

So, next time you hear a comment like “She’s the middle child and you know how they are,” you can set the record straight.