Type A Personality

The global Type A construct produced positive findings in early studies and failed in larger later ones. What survived decomposition is hostility, which retains a modest association with cardiac outcomes, and not the time-urgency and ambition that made the concept popular. The term remains in ordinary use with its original meaning.

In practice

• A description used to explain a colleague's manner rests on a construct cardiology abandoned.
• A screening instrument built on the global pattern would select on the wrong component.

Possible explanations

The explanation offered was that chronic time urgency and competitiveness raise cardiovascular strain. What survived decomposition is narrower: hostility and anger, which have plausible physiological routes through blood pressure and inflammation.

In its favour

Hostility retains a modest association with cardiac outcomes in later work, so the construct contained something real even though the whole did not hold.

Against it

Larger prospective studies failed to reproduce the association for the global construct, the early positive findings came from studies with weaker designs, and the tobacco industry funded part of the research that promoted it.

Standing

Largely abandoned by researchers in the field. Later prospective studies failed to reproduce the association, and the construct has been decomposed, with hostility retaining some predictive value and the rest little. Part of the original research programme received tobacco industry funding, which is documented.

Subject

Psychology & Behavior

Essay

Theories of the mind, from the lab to the bookshop