Welcome to our investigation of the impact of parent personality traits on their children’s personalities.

Parent personalities

Can you say what type of parent personality is most closely associated with successful kids?

• In general, kids do particularly well if their parents are extroverted, agreeable, conscientious and open without being neurotic.
• Even that combination can have some downsides.
• Hence kids with extroverted parents tend to have lower grades.

What is the impact of the Personality traits of parents?

Putting parents aside for a moment, how did the personality traits of kids affect their lives?

• A child’s own personality definitely makes a big difference.
• For example, kids tend to have better grades if they were extroverted, agreeable, open and conscientious. However they had worse grades if they were neurotic.
• Extroverted kids being more likely to smoke or drink, but being open, conscientious or agreeable.

Were there any parent-child personality combinations that seemed to be especially 

• yes, the personalities of children and parents seem similar.
• It’s clearest with family arguments.
• Arguments are less common when either parents or children score high for agreeability.
• When both parents and children are agreeable, arguments dwindle dramatically.
• the highest grades were achieved by non-neurotic kids who had non-neurotic parents.

• Hence neurotic kids with neurotic parents tend to have the highest BMIs.

Do kids have Similar personalities to their parents?

Do kids generally end up with similar personalities as their parents?

Lots of people eventually have the feeling that they’re growing into their parents. But at least in terms of personality traits, the connection is not strong. For example, it’s not at all uncommon for extroverted parents to have introverted children and vice versa. At first, that may seem surprising.
If you have siblings, you know that there can be a lot of difference between people who grow up in the same family.

is it due to parents’ Personality styles?

Can parents use this information to change their styles and potentially help their kids, or is personality so baked in that the die is already cast?

• So much of our personality is really beyond our control.
• If you’re introverted, you can’t suddenly become extroverted.
• But it is possible to change certain daily behaviors, especially if we’re aware of the consequences.
• Kids are likely to be healthier if their parents are conscientious since such conscientious parents encourage exercise and healthy lifestyles more generally.