Type A vs Type B Personality

The story starts with furniture. In the 1950s, cardiologists Meyer Friedman and Ray Rosenman noticed their waiting room chairs were wearing out faster than expected. The upholstery wasn't fraying from the back. It was fraying from the front edges and armrests.¹ Their heart patients weren't sitting back and relaxing. They were perching, fidgeting, gripping the armrests. Something about the way these patients occupied a chair looked different from the way healthy people did.

That observation sparked decades of research into what Friedman and Rosenman called Type A behaviour: a pattern of extreme time urgency, competitiveness, and aggression.² Its opposite they called Type B: calm, patient, and unbothered by the clock. What followed was one of the most famous (and eventually most contested) ideas in health psychology.

How a waiting room became a personality theory

In 1959, Friedman and Rosenman published a paper describing an “overt behaviour pattern” they saw in cardiac patients: driven, aggressive, impatient.² In a large study of over 3,000 healthy men, those classified as Type A were about twice as likely to develop coronary heart disease over 8.5 years compared to Type B men.³ Even after adjusting for smoking and cholesterol, the pattern held.²

By 1978, the U.S. National Institutes of Health formally recognised Type A behaviour as a risk factor for heart disease in middle-aged men.² Friedman and Rosenman wrote a bestselling book. The concept became a household term. Everyone wanted to know: am I Type A?

What Type A and Type B actually look like

Type A describes a behaviour pattern, not a personality type in the way the MBTI uses the term.¹ It's about how you respond to stress and challenge. And few people are purely one or the other. You might be Type A at work (driven, time-pressured) and Type B on vacation (no schedule, no urgency). Context shapes the behaviour.¹

The classic measurement tools are the Jenkins Activity Survey and a structured interview designed to provoke impatient responses (like deliberately interrupting the subject).² The Jenkins Activity Survey measures three facets: achievement orientation, job involvement, and time urgency.² These sub-traits don't always travel together, which matters. (See a fuller personality traits list for how psychologists break behaviour into measurable dimensions.)

The double-edged sword of Type A

Type A gets a bad reputation, but the pattern contains two distinct components.³

The first is achievement striving: hard work, persistence, conscientiousness. Studies show Type A individuals often earn higher grades, work longer hours, and take on more ambitious projects.³ Many high achievers would fit this mould. That's not a health risk. It can be a genuine strength.

The second is impatience-irritability: chronic anger, hostility, and a short fuse.³ This is the part that causes problems. Type A individuals with high hostility report more headaches, sleep difficulties, and relationship strain.³ Their abrasiveness and poor listening can create workplace friction even when their output is strong.

The two components are relatively distinct.³ You can be ambitious and competitive without being hostile. You can be chronically angry without being particularly driven. Recognising this distinction changes everything about how we read the health data.

Health: separating myth from data

The early findings seemed clear: Type A behaviour doubled heart disease risk.³ But later studies painted a more complicated picture. Some replicated the link; others found nothing.⁴ A 2009 review in the AMA's ethics journal noted there was “no general consensus” that Type A traits significantly heighten cardiovascular risk.⁴

The resolution came from unpacking the Type A pattern. When researchers zeroed in on individual components, one stood out: hostility. Chronic anger and cynicism predicted heart disease more strongly than the overall Type A score.⁵ Reanalysis of the original data found that hostility ratings were better at predicting heart attacks than the global Type A/B classification.⁵

Today, most cardiologists take a balanced view: personality alone isn't destiny for your health. Type A isn't a heart attack sentence, and Type B isn't an insurance policy. Managing chronic anger and stress is beneficial for everyone, regardless of where they fall on this spectrum.

Type A/B vs. MBTI and the Big Five

Type A/B is entirely separate from the MBTI. The MBTI sorts people into 16 types based on cognitive preferences (Introversion, Sensing, Thinking, etc.). It doesn't measure drive, urgency, or anger. You could be any MBTI type and still be very Type A. Some people associate the MBTI's Judging preference with Type A traits, but the overlap is loose at best. How partners handle stress differently can matter more than type labels; the MBTI compatibility chart shows how these preferences interact in relationships.

The more interesting comparison is with the Big Five. A classic Type A person would likely score high on Conscientiousness (driven, organised), high on Neuroticism (stress-prone, irritable), and low on Agreeableness (hostile, competitive).⁶ The Big Five captures these dimensions separately, which means it can distinguish between healthy ambition and toxic hostility in a way that the blunt Type A/B label can't.

That's why most researchers consider the Type A/B framework outdated.⁷ It opened important questions about personality and health. But the Big Five gives better answers, covering more ground with more precision (we lay out the full comparison in MBTI vs. Big Five). Human personality is too varied for a two-category system.⁷

Frequently asked questions

References

1. SimplyPsychology. Type A and Type B Personality. Source ↩
2. The American Institute of Stress. Type A and Coronary Disease, Part 1. Source ↩
3. PsychologyWiki. Type A and Type B Personalities. ↩
4. Journal of Ethics (AMA). Managing Health Risks of Type A Personality. 2009. Source ↩
5. SimplyPsychology. Hostility as the key cardiac risk in Type A. Source ↩
6. Crowe Associates. The Big 5 Personality Traits. Source ↩
7. WikiMD. Type A and Type B Personality Theory. Source ↩