So I was in this meeting recently when someone comments on me being ambitious by saying,
“It’s because you’re so Type A”
And I’m like okay...
Wait...
What?
Because in my years of study and research I hadn’t come across “Type A” personality
in psychology.
But lots of websites define Type A individuals as competitive, impatient, ambitious,
high-achieving workaholics and people use it in conversation all the time.
[Amy Santiago] I wouldn't say I'm controlling, I would say I'm Type A.
So from this one throwaway comment, I became
fixated on where Type A personality came from, which maybe validates that person’s comment
that I have those personality traits.
And when I asked, is type A real?
What I discovered was a story of fraud, corruption, and murder.
[Chris Moltisanti] There he goes, Mr. Type A personality.
Okay, that sell was very over the top but it’s actually a really interesting story.
This episode is sponsored by Brilliant
To get back to the basics, Type A personalities are described as outgoing, ambitious workaholics.
And then there’s Type B personalities, they’re more relaxed and patient with a go-with-the-flow
attitude.
But Type A and Type B personalities weren’t developed by psychologists.
Instead, they came from an unlikely partnership between two cardiologists and the tobacco industry,
attempting to link personality traits to the risk of heart disease.
In the 1950s, cigarettes were getting a pretty bad rap for being linked to various health concerns.
And in 1952, after Reader’s Digest published an article linking cigarettes to cancer, tobacco
companies didn’t want people thinking that their product could kill them, so they ramped
up their marketing campaigns and funded research to blur the lines between cigarettes and disease.
So in 1959, two cardiologists first published a study describing Type A and Type B personality
and linking Type A to heart disease.
Some of the specific traits that the doctors included were honestly quite strange.
So people were characterised as type A if they had “a general air of impatience”
or if they engaged in “excessive gesturing” and who knows the threshold when gesturing
becomes excessive, because I would probably cross it.
Anyway, tobacco companies claimed that it wasn’t cigarettes that led to heart disease.
They said that Type A people were more likely to smoke cigarettes, so it was their
aggressive, impulsive behavior that led to their risk of heart disease.
If there was any habit to be kicked, it was changing their personalities, not their cigarettes.
Of course, hindsight is beautiful, but this is a pretty epic example of gaslighting if I’ve ever seen one.
Now the majority of follow-up studies did not
find a significant link between Type A personality and heart disease, but
the tobacco industry continued to fund this research for 40 years until the late 90s.
That’s a really long time to be doing kind of bogus research.
It wasn’t until a 1998 court decision that forced the tobacco industry to turn over nearly
40,000 documents that we all learned the extent of their manipulation of health research.
I do want to take a moment here to say that – while this big corporate behaviour was
super dodgy – research today has come a long way in disclosing conflicts of interest,
where research is getting funding from, and generally is pretty heavily scrutinised so
you’re not going to get gaslit about your health...we hope.
Most importantly, cardiologists now would not do what those two cardiologists did in 1959.
That’s right. Medicine has changed hugely.
Medical research is far from perfect, but it’s come a long way since the 1950s
and has a strict code of ethics it has to adhere to with all sources of funding having to be made public.
I’d like to think cardiologists, like me, would no longer willfully mislead and misrepresent data.
We certainly wouldn’t take money from the tobacco industry
because we get plenty from 5G manufacturers in the coronavirus coverup.
Oh God, I've said too much.
Now if being Type A
is a strong part of your identity…
I’m sorry because recent studies suggest that Type A and Type B personality types don’t
actually exist.
Sure, we all have personality traits that could fit into Type A or Type B, but now we
think that personality traits exist on a spectrum, they’re not binary.
So you exist somewhere in between the two extremes.
For example, most of you would not be 100% introverted or 100% extraverted, you would
exist somewhere on that continuum.
Which is why most personality research now uses the Big Five, or the OCEAN model, where
you’re mapped across how open you are to new experiences, how conscientious, extraverted
and agreeable you are, and neuroticism.
And while this link between Type A personality and heart disease started out as smoke and
mirrors, there is a takeaway from this research: personality can affect your health.
But like most psychology research, the picture is a little complicated.
For example, one trait – neuroticism – seems to lead to more illnesses.
It’s associated with a higher risk of depression, anxiety, substance use disorder, and gastrointestinal conditions.
That sounds pretty bad, right?
But on the other hand being a little neurotic has been associated with people living longer,
perhaps because when you are a little neurotic, those feelings cause you to seek out health
care more frequently.
Then there’s conscientiousness, which seems to have the most consistent link to good health.
People who are more conscientious tend to be more organised, have good impulse control,
and they also tend to live longer.
But, put your thinking cap on... is longevity inherent to this personality trait OR does
the personality trait cause people more likely to adopt certain behaviors which lead to them
living longer?
While in psychology there are few clear answers, the second option is most likely.
Because overall, people who are conscientious are less likely to drink excessively, to smoke,
to drive riskily, and to engage in all other kinds of risky behavior.
But you’re not doomed if you are not conscientious, a lot of our behaviour is habits, which we
can change.
And we can also figure out how to best navigate our lives by having a better understanding
of our personality traits.
One exercise is to identify your personal triggers, your energisers, and your managers.
I promise this is practical.
If you are more neurotic, identify what makes you anxious or nervous,
and how you can best prepare for or manage those situations.
If you’re more introverted in that you're drained by crowds and energised by solitude,
set goals and deadlines so you can get things done before
you’re in a crowded space.
If you’re more laid back, use a daily to-do list or if you’re more detail-orientated,
make sure you plan some downtime for yourself.
Of course it’s fun to type yourself and say “I’m a Slytherin” or “I’m a Stark”
but one of the benefits of really understanding your personality is to be able to adjust your behavior
to better suit your well-being.
And the one benefit of that dodgy Type A personality research is it actually prompted us to look at the link between
personality and health.
And in the event that your personality is linked to poorer health, it doesn’t
mean that’s predetermined and you can't create good habits, because you can.
Instead of resigning yourself to the fact that you’re just Type B or you’re 99%
lazy or – this is my personal one – you’re too anxious to relax, we all have the power to build
healthy behaviors that ultimately lead to better well-being.
And the other thing that the two cardiologists did not know
that 2020 would officially become the year of statistics.
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So, when we basically finished this video.
I realized that I forgot to complete the story of my transformation or whatever,
and basically revisit the people who were calling me type A.
Well now that you know “Type A personality” is a myth, instead of calling people like me Type A
You could say that I pay attention to every detail.
That I never settle for mediocrity.
I overachieve expectations.
Just like this Type A deodorant that my editor Dominique found in Target.
If you can support us to create more videos, the link to the BrainCraft Patreon is in the
doobly do.
Thanks for watching and never settle for mediocrity.