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Is authoritarianism the main element of the coronary‐prone personality?
Author(s) -
Ray J. J.,
Simons L. A.
Publication year - 1982
Publication title -
british journal of medical psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.102
H-Index - 62
eISSN - 2044-8341
pISSN - 0007-1129
DOI - 10.1111/j.2044-8341.1982.tb01500.x
Subject(s) - psychology , authoritarianism , element (criminal law) , personality , social psychology , political science , democracy , law , politics
Clients at the Sydney Coronary Heart Disease Prevention Programme were screened for actual CHD and sufferers were compared with non‐sufferers on four personality scales to measure, respectively, A‐B, dominance, achievement motivation and ‘freneticism’. There were 112 sufferers and 201 controls. Sufferers were found to have significantly higher scores on dominance‐the Ray (1976) Directiveness scale‐but also to have significantly lower scores on the A‐B measure. This latter reversal of the usual relationship was an artifact of the fact that older people are both more CHD prone and get lower A‐B scores. When age was controlled for there was no relationship between A‐B type and CHD. This left the authoritarian style of dominance measured by the Directiveness scale as the sole predictor of CHD. This was held to be a belated vindication of claims made in the pioneering work of Dunbar (1943).