I’ve heard that type A personalities are intense and type B personalities are more
chill.
But I’m really intense about my chilling.
WHAT AM I???
Hey A’s and B’s, Julian here for DNews.
I remember a time before the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator was all the rage when people
neatly classified themselves in two categories.
You were either type A or type B.
Traditionally, type A’s are competitive, driven, hard workers.
They are bossy, impatient, eat fast, and interrupt people.
Type B’s are the opposite.
They’re more relaxed, living for the moment, and apparently slow eaters.
In other words, type A’s are there to win, while type B’s are just happy to be out
there.
The two personality types were defined in the ‘50s by doctors Meyer Friedman and Ray
Rosenman, but they weren’t psychologists, they were cardiologists.
So what, you may be wondering, were a couple of heart doctors doing defining personality
types?
Well when they were conducting their research, they were exploring if certain personality
traits increased someone’s risk of heart disease.
For eight and a half years they followed over 3000 middle aged men, who were divided almost
evenly into the two personality types based on a questionnaire they answered.
Their results, published in 1976, found that type A people were almost twice as likely
to develop coronary heart disease than type B people.
The finding isn’t without its controversies though.
Aside from the fact that precisely zero women participated, the motives behind this study
have been called into question.
In 2012 the American Journal of Public Health published a paper by Dr. Mark Petticrew and
others of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
In it Petticrew claims that after analyzing documents from the tobacco industry, they
concluded that research on the type A behavior pattern were funded by tobacco companies in
an effort to confound the link between smoking and heart disease.
And a 2001 meta-analysis by Michael Myrtek published in the International Journal of
Cardiology found that while hostility does seem to have an association with coronary
heart disease, the effect size is so small it’s not significant for prediction or prevention.
In other words, just being irritable and combative is not enough to be a major risk factor for
a heart attack.
Of course if you fit the Type A personality scheme and you turn to smoking to cope with
the stress, that’s bad news for your heart.
Actually, even without the stress, smoking is bad, m’kay?
And it should be added that you probably don’t fit neatly into either type A’s or type
B’s little boxes.
There are more than two types of people in the world, it’s ok to #breakthrerules.
Maybe sometimes you’re intense about your play.
The new Toyota Tacoma encourages you to break the rules, and PLAY NOW.
After a ten-year wait, the all-new Tacoma is finally here.
It’s been fully redesigned to play whenever and wherever you want.
People love to define their personalities.
There are a plethora of free tests online available and right now the Myers-Briggs Type
Indicator is so widespread that it’s used by most fortune 100 companies when they’re
hiring people.
But it’s not based in science.
For a better personality breakdown, you need the Big 5, and Laci explains what those are
here.
So here’s a fun little experiment we can do.
I hypothesize that people who identify as type A personalities, due to their eager and
competitive traits, are more likely to reply to this video now that I’ve called them
out.
Let us know if you think you’re an A or B in the comments, subscribe for more, and
I’ll see you next time on DNews.