Type A Behavior and Cardiovascular Disease

Abstract

The type A behavior pattern (TABP) showed immense success in predicting coronary heart disease (CHD) incidence for three decades, from the 1960s onward, and was considered a strong and independent risk factor for CHD development. The TABP, or behavior classifications closely related to this pattern, are still used both in practice and in research settings, for this purpose. But due to a number of negative findings and critical commentaries on the relation between type A behavior pattern and CHD from the middle of the 1980s and few positive G.A. Espnes (*) Center for Health Promotion Research, Department of Social Work and Health Science, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Trondheim, Norway Australian National University, Canberra, Australia e-mail: geirae@svt.ntnu.no; geir.arild.espnes@svt.ntnu.no D. Byrne Research School of Psychology, The Medical School, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia e-mail: don.byrne@anu.edu.au # Springer Science+Business Media Singapore 2015 M. Alvarenga, D. Byrne (eds.), Handbook of Psychocardiology, DOI 10.1007/978-981-4560-53-5_30-1 1 findings in the same period of time, researchers and practitioners have questioned whether the TABP’s predictability of future CHD development was really quite so well established. This chapter describes the early history of TABP and also scrutinizes the related concept of type A personality, which became the concept to describe what was the underlying personality of TABP. It sums up the research history for the TABP construct by starting with a number of reviews and metaanalyses on the concept from the late 1980s and until now. The chapter is based on a close examination of the research on TABP involving extensive literature searches conducted in 2003, 2010, and 2013 using PubMed, MEDLINE and PsycINFO, and the search term “type behavior and CVD.” While the volume of evidence has declined over time, recent work suggests a continuing utility for the construct.