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4th September 2018
06:39pm BST

The reason being younger siblings often pick up on their older siblings' behaviour –and are very likely to copy them. In a 2004 study, Richard Rende, a professor of psychiatry at Brown University, helped find evidence supporting the idea that siblings may be the single most important influence on children.
The study, which focused mainly on smoking habits, looked at families where the parents smoked and also those where the older sibling smoked, to measure and compare their influence.
Rende told NPR: "Both can have an effect, but in a lot of studies they've found that the effect an older sibling smoking has is greater than the effect that parental smoking has."
When one sibling is a smoker, Rende's study found that the other sibling is 25 percent more likely to smoke. The risk is even higher with drinking, at 36 percent.
It is also important to note that older sibling's good behaviours are "just as contagious as bad."
Phew!