The Fun and Benefits of Type-A Behavior

A 1959 journal article reported that Type A behavior—what’s often called “hurry sickness” and a tendency to get angry, increases risk of cardiovascular disease. 

But a more recent review of the literature in the American Journal of Public Health  found that a number of follow-up studies failed to confirm the claim. The authors of that review concluded that studies prominently reporting that link between Type-A behavior and heart disease were funded by the tobacco industry as a way to deflect attention from cigarette smoking causing heart disease.

It may nevertheless still be that, when the, ahem, smoke clears, Type-A behavior, especially its angry variant, will be shown to at least modestly contribute to cardiovascular disease. And there’s little doubt that an angry personality usually results in ostracism and less influence.

But rather than dismissing Type-A behavior as such a bad characteristic that all efforts should be made to quell it, it might be worth considering its upsides. I outline them in my PsychologyToday.com article today.