Individual differences in stress: Personality type Flashcards
What is a type A personality?
Describes someone who is competitive, time urgent and hostile in most situations.
Research has linked type A with CHD.
What is a type B personality?
laid-back, relaxed and tolerant of others in most situations.
What is a type c personality?
Someone who is compliant, avioids conflict and suppresses their emotions especially anger, in most situations.
Research has liked type C with cancer.
Who theorised the personality type for stress?
Friedman and Rosenman
Describe Friedmans and Rosenmans research into personality types.
They studied over 3000 men in California.
The men were free of CHD at the start of the study.
Personality type was assessed by 25 questions in a structured interview.
Findings: Eight and a half years later 257 men had developed CHD 70% of these had been assessed as being type A personality.
Type A had higher levels of the hormone adrenaline and noradrenaline and higher blood and cholesterol levels.
This indicates that type A are more prone to stressors.
Datorre et.al research
Studies 200 veterans of the Vietnam war, 75 were cancer patients and the rest formed a control group.
They found that the cancer patients reported significantly greater emotional repression and fewer depression symptoms than the non-cancer control.
This links type C and cancer proneness.
Evaluation of personality type:
Limitations- It could be that age is a more reliable predictor for cancer than personality type. They found a positive correlation of type c and cancer up to the age of 50 but after that it becomes inconsistent.
The Type A personality type may be considered as too broad and general because it includes
vastly different traits i.e. competitiveness, time urgency and hostility.
