Type A behaviour pattern
A pattern of competitive drive, time urgency, impatience and hostility, contrasted with a relaxed Type B pattern. It was proposed as a risk factor for coronary heart disease.
What drives it
Uses speed, competition and control to hold self-worth together: being ahead and busy keeps a sense of inadequacy or loss of control away. As a description of a style it is still handy shorthand; as a health predictor only the hostility component survives, so look for the anger, not the busyness.
How it shows
Work
Talks fast and finishes other people's sentences, does email in meetings, checks the time, turns every metric into a race, visibly irritated by slow colleagues, queues and delays, works through lunch, measures days by output. The useful split for identification: the urgent, competitive part is often harmless and productive; the cynical, hostile part ('idiots', slammed doors, contempt for slower people) is what predicts damage to health and to teams.
Relationships
Competitive even in games, impatient with partner's pace, struggles to rest on holidays, hostility in conflict.
Self
Irritation at queues, feeling that there is never enough time, and finding rest uncomfortable or wasteful.
What tells it apart
Workaholism: Workaholism is compulsive overworking driven by inner pressure; Type A is a broader behavioural style that includes hostility and competitiveness even outside work.
Conscientiousness: Conscientious people are organised and reliable and can be calm; Type A adds urgency, competitiveness and irritability.
Hypomanic (manic) character: Type A is driven and impatient but focused; hypomanic characters are expansive, playful and flit between interests, and are fleeing low mood.
A test
Watch for hostility under minor delays: it is the only part with predictive value.
Questions to carry
- Held up by a small delay, what comes out of the person toward whoever is in the way?
- Whose slowness makes me angry fastest, and what am I racing toward?
How strong the research is
mixed. Early studies linked Type A to heart disease, but later larger studies failed to replicate; only the hostility component reliably predicts cardiac risk, and some of the research was funded by the tobacco industry.
Where it comes from
Meyer Friedman and Ray Rosenman, 1959