The values of only-children: Power and benevolence in the spotlight

Highlights

• Personality differences between only-children and siblings were revealed through their values.

• In their value priorities, only-children tended to be more self-centered than individuals with siblings.

• Only-children prioritized benevolence values less and power values more than those with siblings.

• Only-children’s value priorities became relatively less self-centered with age.

• Effects on values complement effects on traits that were previously considered unnoticeable.

Abstract

The stereotype that only-children are more self-centered than others has gained little support from studies on personality traits but had not been previously tested with respect to personal values, which are also an important part of personality. Data from 3085 Australian adults revealed that only-children give more importance to power values and less importance to benevolence values than individuals with siblings. These differences, which are consistent with the stereotype, were strongest in young people but diminished gradually with age and disappeared in those over 62 years old. The results challenge the view that personality is largely unaffected by shared life-experiences associated with family structure, at least regarding the values aspect of personality.

Introduction

In China, only-children are said to be subject to Little Emperor Syndrome (e.g., Fong, 2004). In the West, the alleged self-centeredness of only-children is popularly believed to be part of only-child syndrome (e.g., Hartmann, 2019). While such views are widespread and longstanding (e.g., Bohannon, 1896), they have gained little empirical support. The meta-analysis of 141 studies by Polit and Falbo (1987) found no differences in personality between only-children and siblings. A more recent study concluded that any differences were “vanishingly small” (Stronge, Shaver, Bulbulia, & Sibley, 2019, p.6).

It is typical for research into the effects of family structure and related differences in parental investment on personality development to focus on personality traits using Big-Five or HEXACO instruments (e.g., Stronge et al., 2019). But values are also part of personality (e.g., Parks-Leduc, Feldman, & Bardi, 2015) and possible effects on values have yet to be studied. Hence the consistent picture emerging from trait-based research that only-children are little or no different from others (e.g., Polit & Falbo, 1987) is insufficient to determine whether this popular stereotype is wrong. We therefore aimed to investigate the possibility that only-children and those with siblings differ in their values.

The experiences of only-children and those with siblings differ in consistent ways across families. In contrast to children with siblings, only-children do not have to compete with others for parental attention or access to financial resources (Polit & Falbo, 1987). Only-children also miss out on socializing with siblings in the family environment (Mancillas, 2006, Polit and Falbo, 1987), and they do not have as much experience of compromising with peers, such as siblings. The dedicated parental investment and lack of sibling-related socialization increase the chances that only-children may become self-centered (Mancillas, 2006, Stronge et al., 2019). It has even been suggested that exaggerated effects of this kind might make only-children more prone to narcissism (e.g., Millon, 1981). While this notion gained support (Cai, Kwan, & Sedikides, 2012), it was subsequently undermined by Dufner, Back, Oehme, and Schmukle (2019), who found no such effects when potentially confounding variables such as age, gender, and socioeconomic status were controlled for.

Narcissism, one part of the ‘Dark Triad’ of personality factors, corresponds and overlaps with the low pole of the honesty-humility HEXACO factor (Hodson et al., 2018). In their research into HEXACO-related personality differences in only-children, Stronge et al. (2019) concluded that, while only-children appeared to have lower honesty-humility levels than siblings, the differences were too small to be meaningful. However, their conclusion seems to have been based on the mean differences calculated across all age-groups. The differences reported in their two youngest age-groups of 18–25 and 26–35 years were considerably larger, if not strong. Given that personality changes somewhat throughout the life span (e.g. Specht, Egloff, & Schmukle, 2011), this does not preclude the possibility that only-children are more self-centered than those with siblings in their youth, but the effect fades with time.

Only-children have been found to be different from siblings in many ways, including differences in eyesight (Chu, Khan, Jahn, & Kraemer, 2015), body mass index (Li, Xue, Wang, Wen, & Wang, 2017), depressive symptoms (Jin, Zeng, An, and Xu, 2019), and perceived stress and studying-related life satisfaction (Chu et al., 2015). They have also been found to be higher on character strengths such as humor, curiosity, zest, interpersonal wisdom, and leadership (Guo, Zhang, & Zhang, 2015); the behavioral attribute of self-enhancement (Falbo, 2018); and, when compared to children other than firstborns in general, and lastborns from families of two, achievement motivation (Polit & Falbo, 1987). It is possible that no corresponding effects on personality traits have been found because there are none to be found, or that, as Hughes (2005) suggests, uncontrolled mediating factors may in some situations inhibit the detection of consistent effects on personality traits.

It is also possible that the aforementioned stereotypical difference between only-children and those with siblings is manifested in a particular aspect of personality that has not been studied yet, namely values. While correlated empirically (see meta-analysis in Parks-Leduc et al., 2015), exactly in which ways values and traits interrelate is not fully understood. Vecchione, Alessandri, Roccas, and Caprara (2019) found that values do not tend to predict later traits, yet values and traits tend toward synchronous development.

We aimed to explore whether the stereotype of self-centered only-children might be based on observations of differences attributed to self-enhancement values. We used the Schwartz (1992) system of values, which is arguably the leading and most widely adopted values model used in psychological research.

Values (e.g., benevolence, power) convey important life goals and guide people’s judgements and behavior (e.g., Schwartz, 1992). Like personality traits, with which they correlate systematically (Parks-Leduc et al., 2015), values were found to be somewhat heritable but are also subject to environmental reinforcement (Twito & Knafo-Noam, 2020). Unlike traits, which describe the way we are, values describe what we want in life (e.g., Parks-Leduc et al., 2015). Values are systematically related to behavior, including when behavior is rated by close others (e.g., Bardi & Schwartz, 2003), and people who prioritize a value very highly tend to behave consistently according to the value (Lee, Bardi, Gerrans, Sneddon, van Herk, Evers, & Schwartz, in press). People can correctly identify others’ values (Dobewall, Aavik, Konstabel, Schwartz, & Realo, 2014), probably through their behavior and verbal judgements, and this could be the basis for the widespread views that only-children and those with siblings differ in their personalities.

Like personality traits, values are rather stable (see review in Schuster, Pinkowski, & Fischer, 2019) but can change as individuals adapt to new situations (e.g., Bardi et al., 2014, Daniel et al., 2013). Research suggests that personal values are affected by upbringing, with both parenting (e.g., Döring et al., 2017, Knafo and Schwartz, 2001) and schooling (e.g., Berson and Oreg, 2016, Hofmann-Towfigh, 2007) having effects on values. Some changes may revert over time (Lönnqvist, Verkasalo, Wichardt, & Walkowitz, 2013), but not if repeatedly strengthened by consistent environmental reinforcement (Bardi & Goodwin, 2011). If the presence or absence of siblings affects the values of children, a stable family environment may provide the consistent reinforcement required to stabilize such effects.

Maturation effects may overwrite those associated with youth and upbringing, making them less apparent in adults. For example, only-children were found to have lower levels of social skills relative to their peers in kindergarten (Downey & Condron, 2004) but were deemed to have learned to overcome this deficit by adolescence, and become as popular with their peers as those with siblings (Bobbitt-Zeher & Downey, 2013). In a longitudinal study tracking value changes in 280 young adults, the value of conformity became increasingly important as individuals progressed from 20 to 28 years of age; a change attributed to socialization effects on young adults adapting to the demands of “conventional social roles” (Vecchione et al., 2016, p119). In addition to universal experiences such as this, and others related to ageing, life-events particular to individuals also contribute to changes in values. For example, the values of power and achievement became less important, and security and universalism more important, to a sample of individuals after migrating from Russia to Finland (Lönnqvist, Jasinskaja-Lahti, & Verkasalo, 2011). Nevertheless, given the importance of early years to personality development (Wängqvist, Lamb, Frisén, & Hwang, 2015), it is possible that universally shared experiences relating to the presence or absence of siblings have lasting effects.

In the Schwartz (1992) model, values are organized in a circle such that adjacent values tend to be compatible with one another, and opposite values tend to conflict with one another. The adjacent self-enhancement values of power and achievement oppose those of universalism and benevolence, which express the self-transcendence higher order value. Relations of values to other variables also tend to follow the circle shown in Fig. 1, hence a positive relation to one value is likely to be accompanied by a negative relation to opposite values (Schwartz, 1992).

If the stereotype of only-children is correct, then self-enhancement values should be relatively more important to only-children, as these convey the motivation for selfish interests, even at the expense of others. This is also compatible with the finding that self-enhancing behaviors were found more frequently in only-children compared with people with siblings (see above, Falbo, 2018). In contrast, self-transcendence values should be relatively less important to only-children compared to those with siblings. Honesty, as well as being part of the HEXACO factor of honesty-humility, is also a component value of the self-transcendence value of benevolence. Of the correlations observed between all HEXACO factors and values by Anglim, Knowles, Dunlop, and Marty (2017), the strongest were between honesty-humility and power (negative) and between honesty-humility and benevolence (positive). The power value relates to such goals as enhancing one’s social status, and control and dominance over others, whereas benevolence relates to preserving and enhancing the welfare of others. If effects on these values in line with the stereotype were observed, this would be consistent with the small to medium sized differences observed by Stronge et al. (2019) in their youngest age-groups.

If power values were found to be more important, and benevolence values less important, to only-children relative to individuals with siblings, this would have implications beyond HEXACO measures of personality. Power values are conceptually and empirically related to power motivation (see, e.g., Bilsky and Schwartz, 2008, Frimer and Walker, 2009), which has implications for moral development (see, e.g., Walker & Frimer, 2011). Power, being related to a desire to influence others, is likely to impact the character strength of leadership that Guo et al. (2015) found to be enhanced in only-children. As a self-enhancement value, it also relates conceptually to the behavioral attribute of self-enhancement that Falbo (2018) found to be greater in only-children. Also, given that achievement is the other self-enhancement value, it would complement the higher achievement-motivation of only-children reported by Polit and Falbo (1987).

To investigate whether differences in the personalities of only-children and those with siblings would be found in their values we tested the values of a large and varied sample of Australian adults. If the stereotype of the self-centered only-child is supported by differences between the values of only-children and those raised with siblings, we would expect only-children to attach relatively greater importance to self-enhancement values, particularly power values, and relatively lower importance to self-transcendence values, particularly benevolence values. If the popular rationale explaining such differences is correct (i.e. that they are due to the lack of sibling-related socialization and dedicated parental investment during childhood and adolescence) it seems likely that they would be found to fade in adulthood as other environmental factors become more influential. To this end, we also incorporated age in our analyses, once using age as a continuous variable and once by different age-groups. The youngest of our three age-groups overlapped with the three youngest age-groups (18–25, 26–35 and 36–45) used by Stronge et al. (2019), and our oldest with the two oldest (66–75 and 76 plus) of their seven age-groups.