No evidence that siblings’ gender affects personality across nine countries

Thomas Dudek, Anne Brenøe, Jan Feld and Julia M. Rohrer

No 408, ECON - Working Papers from Department of Economics - University of Zurich

Abstract: Does growing up with a sister rather than a brother affect personality? In this paper, we provide a comprehensive analysis of the effects of siblings’ gender on adults’ personality, using data from 85,887 people from 12 large representative surveys covering 9 countries (the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Australia, Mexico, China, and Indonesia). We investigated the personality traits risk tolerance, trust, patience, locus of control, and the Big Five. We found no meaningful causal effects of the gender of the next younger sibling, and no associations with the gender of the next older sibling. Based on high statistical power and consistent results in the overall sample and relevant subsamples, our results suggest that siblings’ gender does not systematically affect personality.

Keywords: Personality; economic preferences; sibling gender; sibling sex (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J12 J16 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ban and nep-sea
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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https://www.zora.uzh.ch/id/eprint/217399/1/econwp408.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: No Evidence That Siblings' Gender Affects Personality across Nine Countries (2022)
Working Paper: No Evidence that Siblings’ Gender Affects Personality Across Nine Countries (2022)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zur:econwp:408

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