Personalities and Behavior Patterns, Type A and Type B

Definition

The type A personality is a collection of behaviors that include impatience and a sense of urgency about accomplishing most tasks; aggressiveness and sometimes hostility toward others, especially those who “get in the way”; and a desire for achievement that leads to exaggerated competitiveness and striving for success. Type A personalities lead fast-paced lives; they speak quickly, walk quickly, eat quickly—all in an attempt to accomplish as much as possible in as little time as possible. By comparison, type B personalities are relaxed and easygoing, less concerned with the pressures of success (but are not lazy), and generally lead less hectic lives.

History and Importance

Interest in type A behavior first arose in the 1950s when two cardiologists, Meyer Friedman and Ray Rosenman, noticed that patients with coronary problems seemed to behave differently from noncoronary patients. Careful observation led Friedman and Rosenman to describe the type A behavior pattern as “an action-emotion complex that can be observed in any person who is aggressively involved in a chronic, incessant struggle to achieve more and more in less and less time, and if required to do so, against the opposing efforts of other things and other persons.” Subsequent research sought to validate speculation that the type A pattern made a person prone to coronary disease. In one of the most famous early studies, the Western Collaborative Group Study (WCGS), more than 3,000 middle-aged men were followed for 8½ years beginning in 1960–1961.

All the men were free from coronary disease at the beginning of the study. When data collection was terminated in 1969, nearly twice as many type A personalities as type B personalities had developed coronary heart disease. At the time, type A behavior appeared to be a personality or lifestyle predictor of coronary disease on par with traditional and well-known risk factors such as smoking, high cholesterol, and hypertension.

Other medical research soon followed and with it came mixed results and controversy. Some studies replicated the WCGS, but others (including longerterm follow-ups of the WCGS sample) did not, and the results for women and various ethnic groups were not always consistent. Much of the confusion could be traced to the way type A behavior was measured in research. The original method for identifying type A behavior is called the structured interview (SI). It is time-consuming and requires special training to administer. Alternative questionnaire measures, the most well-known being the Jenkins Activity Survey, were developed to allow faster and more efficient assessment. Unfortunately, the questionnaires mimic the content of the SI but do not include the challenges that are part of the interview nor do they capture the speech style and nonverbal cues that are crucial to identifying type A behavior during the SI. Not surprisingly, research conducted with the two forms of assessment does not always arrive at similar conclusions because different features of type A behavior are being emphasized. In some ways, this problem was a blessing in disguise because it prompted researchers to explore how particular facets of type A behavior are related to coronary risk.

...