According to Brigham Young University, they can now pinpoint with definitive certainty the single exact cause of sibling differences (with respect to performance), beyond genes. It turns out that parents are the cause of these differences. Our Montreal psychologists believe that it is simply a matter of chronological order; parents tend to view older siblings as higher in all-around performance. When comparing siblings, parents do try to compare them as they were in their respective ages. However, by the time a 2nd child is born, the first-born is often engaged in more rigorous academic an physical activities, and tends to bias the parents' opinion. The experiment performed by Brigham Young University measured the difference between the academic performances of children before and after their parents compared their children. The result is surprising because social experiments rarely yield such stark contrasts; there was absolutely no difference in the average test scores of any of the siblings, yet parents still had the believe that the first-born outperformed the younger sibling.
To make matters worse, the researchers found that parents then reflect their beliefs through their behaviour which then alters their children's behaviour in a way that triggered a decline in academic performance. In other words, not only were the only declines in academic performance by younger siblings coming after their parents compared the siblings, but parents were the ones causing this to begin with.
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