Type A Personality Essay

The topic of interest that I will be covering in this article critique is the correlation between the type A personality and the onset of heart disease. The media article, “Greater Health Risk Seen for Type A Personalities,” claims that a new study has found that aggressive behavior often associated with type A personalities may increase a person’s risk for heart disease. Conversely, the scholarly article, “Hotheads and heart attacks” discusses the Mary Brown experiment, which discovered that type A personalities face no higher risk of heart disease than anyone else. In fact, it was found that type A personalities fare better than their calm counterparts. The researchers conducting the Mary Brown experiment found that hostility was the only

An individual with a type A personality, that is, one mixed with anger, edginess, and competitiveness, is not any more likely to experience a heart attack than a non-type A person. Most of the characteristics of the type A personality, such as competitiveness, are irrelevant to heart disease. Occasional anger and aggressiveness is healthy but a permanent hostile attitude is what takes a toll on a person’s body. Hostile people are continually suspicious, distrustful, short-tempered, anxious, on edge, and believe that everyone is out to get them. This frequent hostility constantly raises a person’s heart rate and blood pressure, and consequently, the artery walls are propelled to scar and pit from the increased blood flow. Furthermore, the Type H theory has been tested and proved multiple times. In one study, 255 doctors who had taken a personality test were tracked down two decades later. The individuals whose hostility scores were very high were more likely to have developed heart disease than those whose hostility scores were lower. In conclusion, I do not believe that the facts reported by the CBS media article are correct since the type H theory of personality has been proven by multiple scholarly studies. Finally, I have gained a large body of knowledge from this course. I am now aware of the many factors and dynamics that actually take a toll on the body through psychological health. I strongly believe that the type A personality in and of itself does not contribute to heart