Stigmatized, the only children would be neither navelists nor narcissists and would even demonstrate to have the hand on the heart, as affirms a Chinese study.
Accused of being “spoiled rots” or even child kings, only children suffer from various stubborn ideas. As recalled Sciences & Life, Monday, December 27, the psychologist Granville Stanley Hall, halfway between the theories of Freud and those of Adler, considered that to be “an only child is a disease in itself“A dishonorable reputation, but justified? Not if we are to believe psychologists from Shaanxi Normal University, a Chinese province which, like the rest of the country, experienced the one-child policy between 1979 and 2015. In an experiment, these Mandarin researchers analyzed the altruistic attitude of 800 adults, raised with or without siblings, and the participants played the so-called “dictator” game.
Scientists would offer them a sum, then ask them how much they would be willing to give to other people. According to this social psychology-focused report, the study’s contributors, who were also only children, were generous, not shy about sharing the money with relatives, friends, and in some cases even strangers. .
“They are all the more inclined to share”
Scarring preconceptions about single children, University of Texas at Austin psychologist Toni Falbo commented in the account Social Psychological and Personality Science in August 2021: “You might think that they are selfish because, not having to share with siblings, they receive all the attention and love of their parents. But precisely, since they generally have everything they want, they are all the more inclined to share.“What nail the beak to bad tongues!