AQA Psychology (7) – Individual differences in stress: personality type – Flashcards

Key Terms

Describes someone who is competitive, time-urgent (e.g. impatient) and hostile in most situations Research has linked this personality type to coronary heart disease (CHD).

Describes someone who is laid-back, relaxed and tolerant of others in most situations (i.e the opposite of Type A).

Describes someone who is compliant, avoids conflict and suppresses their emotions, especially anger, in most situations. Some research has linked Type C with cancer.

Stress and personality

The Western Collaborative Group Study (WCGS) was Friedman and Rosenman's prospective study of over 3000 males living in California.

The men were all medically assessed as free of CHD at the start of the study. They were also assessed for personality type, by being asked 25 questions in a structured interview. The questions concerned their responses to everyday irritations such as having to wait in queues. The interviews were conducted in a way designed to incite Type A-related behavior in the participants. For example, the interviewer would be aggressive and frequently interrupt. Behaviour (such as speed of talking) was observed and measured, and this enables the researchers to classify participants as Type A or Type B.

Eight and a half years later(Friedman and Rosenman 1974), 257 men had developed CHD; 70% of these individuals had been assessed at the start of the study as Type A. This was almost twice as many Type Bs who had developed CHD, even when known CHD risk factors were accounted for. Type As had higher levels of the stress hormones adrenaline and noradrenaline and higher blood pressure and cholesterol levels. This suggests that Type A people, because of their personality, are vulnerable to stressors. Their impatience and hostility cause a raised physiological stress response, which in turn makes them prone to CHD.

Patrick Dattore et al. (1980) studied 200 veterans of the Vietnam War; 75 of them were cancer patients and the rest formed a control group of people with non-cancer diagnoses. They had all completed scales to measure repression of emotions and symptoms of depression several years before they were diagnosed. So this was a prospective study.

The researchers found that the cancer patients reported significantly greater emotional repression and fewer depression symptoms than the non-cancer controls. The finding related to depression may appear surprising, but it supports the view that people who repress their emotions (especially the negative ones) are unlikely to acknowledge they are depressed. This is evidence of a link between Type C and cancer-proneness.

Evaluation

Jose Edigo et al. (2012) studied 150 Spanish men and women, under 65 years old, who have had a stroke, and compared them with a matched control group. The researchers found that the stroke sufferers were significantly more likely to have Type A personalities. This was true of men and women and could not be explained by traditional lifestyle-associated risk factors (such as smoking and diet). The fact that recent research continues to support the view that Type A personality plays a role in cardiovascular diseases suggests that the concept of Type A has some validity.

Some research shows that Type B personality is associated with a greater, not lesser, risk of CHD than Type A. David Ragland and Richard Brand (1988) followed-up men from the original WCGS who survived a heart attack. They confirmed Friedman and Rosenman's findings that there were more Type As in this group. But after a further followed-up period, the researchers found that survivors who were Type B were more likely to die than Type As. This is difficult to explain in terms of Type A coronary-proneness. It may be that Type As are more motivated to make positive lifestyle and behavior changes after a first heart attack than Type Bs, reducing further risk. The finding demonstrates that the relationship between Type A/B personality and illness is a complex one and not yet fully understood.

Psychologists quickly realized that Type A as a global personality construct is much too broad and encompasses too many different traits. Researchers subsequently focused on the hostility component of Type A as linking with stress and CHD. Hostile people are cynical, selfish, manipulative, mistrusting and openly contemptuous. Theodore Dembroski et al. (1989) reanalyzed the data from the WCGS and found that ratings of hostility significantly predicted later incidence of CHD. An analysis of 27-year follow-up data from the same study by Dorit Carmelli et al. (1991) confirmed this by finding exceptionally high CHD death rates in a subgroup of men with high hostility scores. This certainly casts doubt on the validity of the global conception of Type A, but it also supports the view that some aspect of Type A personality is involved in CHD.