individual - type A and B personalities

• What are characteristics of Type A personailty?

  - hostile

  - impulsive

  - rapid movements

  - competitive

  - time urgency
• What are characteristics of Type B personailty?

  - slower speech

  - relaxed

  - flexible
• Who introduced links between personailty/stress/illness?

  Freidman and Rosenman

  - treated patients with CHD

  - came to the conclusion that CHD might be associated with personalities (Type A)
• What was the Western Collaborative Group Study (WCGS)?

  This was Freidman and Rosenmans prospective study of men living in California.
• What was the procedure of WCGS?

  3154 men were medically assessed as free of CHD at the start of the study.

  
  

  Personality type was assessed by 25 questions in a structured interview, these questions consisted of everyday irritations e.g. late bus.

  
  

  Interviews were conducted in a way to incite Type A personality.
• What were the findings of WCGS?

  8 years later 257 men developed CHD, 70% of them had Type A personality, double the amount of Type Bs.

  
  

  Type A people had higher levels of stress hormones, adrenaline and noradrenaline and higher blood pressure.

  
  

  The impatience and hostility of Type A, are vulnerable to stressors.
• Evaluation - type c personailty

  not everyone fits into type a or b personalities.

  
  

  type c was proposed to be linked with cancer, Tmoshok.

  
  

  type C people are described as manifesting pathological niceness, theyre people pleasers, strive to be compliant, self sacrificing.

  
  

  they achieve this by repressing their own emotions e.g. anger.
• evaluation - type c personailty

  
  

  what did Dattore et al find?

  Dattore found;

  
  

  - studied 200 veterians, 75 cancer paitents, 125 control group.

  - they measured scales of repression of emotions before diagnosis.

  - cancer paitents reproted signifcantly more emotional regression than non cancer patients.
• evaluation - problems with type A personality

  limitation -

  - type A concept is too broad.

  - A personailty has too many traits, and researchers tend to focus on hostility component to link stress and CHD.