Premium
Type A behaviour and psychophysiological arousal
Author(s) -
LUNDBERG U.
Publication year - 1982
Publication title -
scandinavian journal of psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.743
H-Index - 72
eISSN - 1467-9450
pISSN - 0036-5564
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9450.1982.tb00464.x
Subject(s) - arousal , psychology , type a and type b personality theory , reactivity (psychology) , blood pressure , developmental psychology , psychophysiology , heart rate , catecholamine , sympathetic nervous system , medicine , social psychology , neuroscience , personality , alternative medicine , pathology
The “coronary prone” or Type A behaviour pattern, characterized by e.g., hard‐driving competitiveness, impatience and aggressiveness, is associated with elevated systolic blood pressure and catecholamine secretion during challenge. In experiments at our laboratory, elevated psychophysiological arousal was found in Type A subjects during understimulation, but not during active performance on a self‐paced reaction time task. Results suggest that differences in cardiovascular and behavioural reactivity between Type A and B persons tend to be related to the pace of the environment to which they are exposed. Studies of antecedents of Type A behaviour in children show that “Type A children” respond to challenge with a greater increase in sympathetic arousal than “non‐Type As”. This suggests the possibility that genetic dispositions and/or conditioned sympathetic reactivity play an important role in the development of the Type A behaviour pattern.