Personality Factors
It is said that people can be placed within 3 different groups, depending on what their characteristics are. One group is Type A, these people are hostile, impatient and competitive, Type B, who are laid back and easy going and then Hardy personality.
Friedman and Rosenman (1974) investigated the links between type A behaviour patterns and coronary heart disease. Using 3200 Californian man, categorised as either Type A, Type B or Type X (a combination). They found that that out of the 257 men who had developed CHD 70% were Type A, twice the amount of type B. Showing that Type A behaviours increase vulnerability to heart disease. There are many problems with the study, such as, it’s androcentric, as the study is only performed on men Also it is a longitudinal study, so participants may drop out throughout the study, making the results unreliable. Another problem, is that’s structured interviews were performed to find out if the man was either type A or type B, structured interviews could result in interviewer effect, social desirability bias and demand characteristics, which can all make the results unreliable. Also a study to go against Friedman and Rosenman is Ragland and Brand (1988), who found that in the study they performed, 15% died, and there was no relationship between type A and dying.
Regarding, the Hardy personality, Kobasa and Maddi (1977) put forward that not everyone could fit into either Type A or Type B. They believed that some people are more ‘hardy’ and better at dealing with stressful situations and did not succumb to illness. After studying 800 American business men and evaluated their stress levels using the SRRS scale, around 150 of the participants were classified as having high stress levels. However only a small number of the 150 high stress participants had ha high stress-related illness record. Participants were then asked to fill out a hardy personality questionnaire, they found that people who had low illness had three characteristics; Control, Committed and they look at Challenges as something to overcome. A study to support Koabasa and Maddi, is Lifton’s (2006) study; 5 universities used the hardiness scale, they then found out that people who scored low on the hardiness scale, dropped out and couldn’t deal with the stress, whereas people who scored high on the hardy questionnaire, stayed and completed their degree. There are some problems with this study, for example the hardy questionnaire, is a questionnaire which means that people may give social desirability bias, meaning they lie to go with what they believe society would think is right, making the results unreliable. Also the study is only done on Americans, making this study ethnocentric, this means that it therefore can’t be generalised.