Type A Behavior Pattern

Abstract

Type A behavior pattern is an overt style of reactions, characterized by some of the following: intense striving for achievement, competition, easily provoked impatience, time urgency, abruptness of gesture and speech (explosive voice), hyper-alert posture, overcommitment to vocation or profession, excesses of drive and hostility. This behavior pattern was first described by Friedman and Rosenman (11), at the end of the 1950s in the United States. Friedman describes the type A pattern as an "action-emotion complex" that is exhibited by those individuals who are engaged in a chronic incessant struggle in order to achieve more and more in less and less time, thus giving rise to a sense of time-urgency, and who usually, but not always, exhibit a free floating but well rationalized hostility. For a long time, this behavior pattern has been extensively studied in the United States (7) whereas lately methods for measuring type A behavior have been validated in Europe, and prevalence data on European populations have been published (1, 16, 19, 30). As we were interested in type A behavior, as well as in other variables in their relation to coronary heart disease, we introduced them in most of our major epidemiological prospective studies (20, 27). Some of the results presented here were published or are in press and reflect a collaborative undertaking with colleagues G. De Backer, F. Kittel, and M. Dramaix.