We need ways to describe someone’s personality that aren’t just an unlimited number of adjectives, she says. “These kinds of frameworks are super popular because they’re very easy to understand – it’s nice to have a label you can use.” “Types are just way too crude,” she says. Whether it’s Type A/B or something like the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, pigeonholing someone into a type is less useful than examining their various dimensions. Sandra Matz is an assistant professor at Columbia Business School in New York City who’s studied psychometrics and ways to measure personality or cognitive ability. This Type A or B model of behaviour is looked at by many professionals and academics as outdated. But calling someone Type A suggests they love both.
In other words, someone can love competition but not time pressure.
“Maybe someone who is achievement-striving may not be irritable or impatient,” says Wilmot. That’s a more modern approach: many psychologists are wary of tests and giving you a single type, instead favouring ones that explore various dimensions of personality, each of which might be measured on a spectrum. The original 1989 study used outdated research practices, like dichotomous response formats (“are you this or that?”), as opposed to measuring traits (like competitiveness or impatience) on sliding scales. Suggesting someone is Type A could be suggesting they have certain personality traits that they don’t even have. Rather, you can have some Type A traits and not have others, or fall on a spectrum of each trait. The problem with “being” Type A, Wilmot and his team suggest, is that you can’t really “be” Type A at all. Their findings are due to be published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
#PERSONALITY TYPE ABCD UPDATE#
So he and his team decided to replicate older studies and update them with more modern survey methods to see if they would produce the same results. This binary aspect of personality – that you’re naturally either Type A or Type B – was the main finding of a 1989 study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.īut University of Toronto postdoctoral student Michael Wilmot wanted to test if these assumptions are still accurate today. In the decades since, the term has entered the popular lexicon and people have used it as a way to place themselves into one camp or another. (One report in 2012 in the American Journal of Public Health asserted that the research was heavily bankrolled by the cigarette industry to avoid any claims that smoking is bad for you.) (Type B, meanwhile, is defined by being relaxed, patient and having behaviour that could decrease a risk of heart disease.)Ī pair of American cardiologists came up with the term in the 1950s to describe white middle-class men who had certain personality traits that made them more susceptible to coronary heart problems. Here’s why you should think twice about casting yourself as Type A at your next job interview.Īccording to the Oxford English Dictionary, Type A personalities are characterised by ambition, impatience, and competitiveness, and thought to be susceptible to stress and heart disease. Researchers from the University of Toronto in Scarborough, Canada say the term can be unhelpful and erroneous, and the way it’s usually applied represents an outdated way of thinking about personality.
But new research suggests the Type A personality might be something of a misnomer. It’s a label that has been applied to powerful, dominant people for decades. Perhaps it’s how you would describe yourself. You likely know someone with a “Type A” personality – an ambitious, competitive person striving for success.
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