TYPE A PERSONALITY: CHARACTERISTICS, DISEASES, TREATMENT - GEOGRAFÍA - 2025

The type A personality (PCTA) is the tendency of people to show ambition, competitiveness and job involvement and impatience, temporal urgency and hostile attitudes. These behaviors would be observed only in stressful or challenging situations.

This personality type was by Friedman and Rosenman (1959), two cardiologists who studied the incidence of psychological aspects in coronary heart disease. This pattern is the opposite of the type B behavior pattern, which are those who are relaxed, open to emotions, both positive and negative, and with high capacities for adaptation.

The aspects surrounding the type A personality or type A behavior pattern (PCTA) have led to a lot of research being carried out on the health problems that it can generate, specifically cardiovascular diseases or hypertension.

It is a lifestyle or behavior where behavioral, physiological, cognitive and emotional responses participate. In other words, it is a concept that encompasses a multitude of dimensions, where the form of expression, attitudes and emotions, motivational aspects, overt behaviors and cognitive aspects become important.

There are differences between men and women; while men have higher anger and hostility components, women have more anxiety and depression.

Characteristics of people with type A personality

We can detect the following components of this personality pattern.

Competitiveness and achievement orientation

Regarding the strategies they use to achieve success, they prefer to work on stressful tasks alone, but in the moments before the task they prefer to be in the company of others.

They are people addicted to work and perfectionists, impulsively looking for success and the achievement of all the objectives and goals that are proposed.

Impatience and temporary urgency

They are people who work in a shorter period of time, making their task worse if they need patience and act slowly. For example, for these subjects the 1 minute interval passes faster than for type B.

These people are unable to wait, they are annoyed at anything that delays or hinders everything they have to do, as well as their progress.

Hostility

They are people who react more aggressively when they are disturbed or interrupted while they are working. Being more hostile they have less social support.

Communication

They speak loudly, quickly, emphasize a lot with their gestures and have high tension in the facial muscles. They seem to always be in a hurry and speed to places. They are highly motivated towards achievement and oriented towards success and ambition.

Although they focus a lot on their work and neglect other areas of their life, they tend to have work and marriage problems, as well as a high social incongruity.

Other behaviors

They have a phobia of wasting time, they don't like to wait, they don't like unpredictable situations that waste their time. They display many nervous behaviors, such as being restless, grinding their teeth or biting their nails, being agitated most of the time.

They are catastrophists, they cannot stop thinking about the mistakes made and the future.

Health

Regarding health aspects, type A is less aware of fatigue or pain and has greater self-control.

On the other hand, they pay less attention to annoying and irrelevant stimuli. Also, they have insomnia issues due to continual frustrating thoughts and worries.

How do type A see work?

Work has taken on a different importance over time. Currently, the knowledge, beliefs, values ​​and cultural models that surround it have influenced the way people perceive it.

They no longer see it only as a means to subsist, but it is seen as a means to stand out above others, as a means to de-stress and forget about problems, escape from reality, or quite the opposite, as a source of additional stress and worries.

Importance of work

Unlike people with PCTB, type A are individuals who see work as an obligation and value the position they occupy and the promotion they can achieve in the future.

One of your main goals is to earn a good salary and have a load of varied activities. On the other hand, they give much less importance to interpersonal relationships.

There are aspects of PCTA that can positively influence the individual's working life, for example motivational ones, however, those related to hostility and impatience can have negative repercussions.

performance

In the world of work, type A subjects can stand out more, because it is an environment where physical and time pressure is high, as well as competitiveness.

On the other hand, the concern for performance and the desire for success and recognition seem to guide these people to achieve greater real achievements.

In addition, the professional profiles that these people occupy are those with the greatest responsibility and status.

Relationship of type A behavior pattern and diseases

There are numerous investigations that reveal the relationship of PCTA with coronary clinical disorders, suggesting that this personality pattern is a predictor of coronary disease and indicating the hostility component as the most damaging.

The cognitive distortions associated with hostility play a fundamental role in the anger and aggressiveness of these subjects. It is also associated with physiological responsiveness in interpersonal conflicts and with higher levels of interpersonal stress.

Regarding the mechanisms that link the behavioral pattern with coronary heart disease, one of the hypotheses that is more widespread consists in the belief that these subjects exhibit cardiovascular hyperresponsiveness.

The role of such family history in hypertension has been extensively studied and seems to be associated with several symptoms. Among them:

• Greater elevations in systolic (high) blood pressure during a series of brief laboratory stressors.
• Greater increases in heart rate and diastolic (low) blood pressure in electric shock avoidance tasks.
• Increased heart rate and diastolic blood pressure during arithmetic tasks.
• Higher systolic pressure in concept formation tasks.

Type A behavior pattern relationship and sport

PCTA has been studied especially in competitive athletes. The psychosocial agents that have the greatest influence on the lives of young people are parents, coaches and the peer group, which are especially relevant during adolescence.

There is research that has found a relationship between the athlete's social support networks and the degree of perceived stress.

Sports practice does not, by itself, favor the appearance of type A personality traits in adolescent athletes, but adaptation to the demands of sports competition needs the support of the psycho-social environment (parents, coaches, friends).

On the other hand, being exposed to a high degree of stress is closely related to the possibility of the appearance of Type A behavioral traits.

This may be related to the poor adaptation of these subjects due to having inadequate coping skills, as a result of the lack of support.

Risks

Athletes with PCTA show a slower recovery of their psychophysiological indices in the face of stress, but this is not related to their being more predisposed to suffering from coronary heart disease, since they are in very good physical condition and enjoy the competitive experience.

According to some authors, PCTA is only associated with the risk of cardiac alterations in cases of a poor coping repertoire.

On the other hand, it has been seen that these subjects tend to train more frequently and are more motivated to train unwillingly. As for parents, they are more demanding and less positive in evaluating their children's performance.

Treatment

The preventive intervention of both the type A behavior pattern and its influence on coronary heart disease should include guidelines that range from risk factors to emotional factors, to generate greater well-being in the person.

Each intervention will depend on the individual analysis of each person, but a global intervention is always necessary for the creation of collective programs that include the risks of individuals and groups in general.

goals

The main objective is the reduction of active coping strategies, and their replacement by techniques that manage to reduce tension and anxiety through the modification of the behavioral, cognitive and physiological components.

Regarding competitiveness, it has been observed that the subjects who score high in this dimension tend to use an attentional mechanism that would mean a lower perception of the symptoms.

Subjects high in impatience-hostility show greater anxiety in the three response levels (cognitive, physiological and motor), in more situations and specifically in those situations of personal evaluation and assumption of responsibilities, phobic situations and habitual or everyday situations.

Relaxation

The possible risks lead us to take into account the need for an intervention based on the prevention of coronary risk in these subjects.

In addition, given that, depending on the situation, stimulate anxiety responses are of different modalities, cognitive-behavioral techniques should be used that adjust to the topographic and functional profile of the subjects.

Behavioral changes

The use of programs that modify the behavior of these people is an effective alternative for behavioral changes and changes in their lifestyle to occur, thus reducing the probability that they will develop coronary heart disease.

Bibliography

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3. Pallarés, J. and Rosel, J. (2001). Type A behavior pattern and stress in adolescent athletes: some mediating variables. Psicothema. vol. 13, No. 1, pp. 147-151.
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