Type A personality description

Type A, Type B

There was a research during the 70s, trying to make connections between health and personality of human beings. During this test, it was concluded that there are two major groups of people. The first group was concluded to have a type A personality, which labeled them as being more anxious and nervous than other group. They were always in a hurry and rushing through life with their irritable manners, struggling for achievement. On the other hand, there is a personality type B, involving people who are more laid back and relaxed, going through life slowly and calmly. Naturally, type A personality was the one prone to developing heart problems due to their ways of life. Even though every generalization is wrong, there are useful facts to be found in this research, being very important for understanding the connection between our personalities and our health.

Am I a Type A Personality?

If you happen to suffer from a low level of self-esteem and are insecure by nature, there is a great possibility that you belong to this group of people. Additionally, since you are always on the run, you are easily upset and irritated, sometimes even being rude and hostile towards other people around you. This anxiety may be due to an inability to relax and wait for things to happen on their own and can be the main culprit behind the heart problems these people are likely to suffer from.

This type of personality was tested through conversation, answering questions and completing a written test. This way, the doctors were able to perceive a type A personality based on his/her answers. The tests done showed that 69% of the tested people who suffered from a heart attack were, in fact, type A personalities. However, this is hardly enough to back this theory up. Moreover, people who suffered from a heart attack, and then survived, changed their lifestyles with the help of their achievement-oriented personality, and eventually lived longer than their type B counterparts.

Still, this theory has quite a lot of flaws and needs further adjusting in order to be completely plausible. Some other researches related to this theory suggested that type A people suffered from heart attacks more due to their proneness to aggressiveness and nervous, anxious, mistrustful bouts. Yet, at the end, this is all relative since not all people are the same nor will ever be. Nevertheless, some major personality types do exist, and they probably influence, the way we live along with our health.