Am I a type A personality - and should I care? | Arwa Mahdawi

"In the 1950s, a secretary in a San Francisco medical office noticed something weird: some of the chairs in the waiting room needed to be reupholstered more frequently than others. Patients with coronary disease, she realised, nearly always arrived on time and gravitated towards hard upholstered chairs rather than comfy sofas. They'd then sit on the edge of the chair, fidget, and aggressively leap up when their names were called."

"This insight took on a life of its own. First it helped inspire the cardiologists she reportedly mentioned it to Dr Ray Rosenman and Dr Meyer Friedman, who wrote a 1959 paper that essentially invented the idea of a type A personality. It classified competitive, productivity-obsessed workaholics as demonstrating overt behaviour pattern A, and argued they were more likely to get heart attacks. They later wrote a book, Type A Behaviour and Your Heart, which became a bestseller."

"Decades later, videos about personality types are going viral on TikTok. Clearly, I'm type A(DHD) because I saw a recent headline about TikTok teens and their personality classification obsession, and went straight into procrastination mode. I stopped whatever I was supposed to be doing, opened 1,200 different tabs, and hyperfixated on the issue including a long search for the name of the secretary who had the initial insight. But, if she existed (some accounts credit an upholsterer), her name isn't easy to find."

In the 1950s a secretary in a San Francisco medical office observed that patients with coronary disease tended to arrive on time, choose hard chairs, sit on the edge, fidget, and leap up when called, and that those chairs required more frequent reupholstering. Cardiologists Ray Rosenman and Meyer Friedman developed a 1959 paper framing Type A personality, labeling competitive, productivity-obsessed workaholics as pattern A and linking them to heart attacks; they later published a bestselling book. The tobacco industry used the idea to deflect smoking-cancer links. Personality-type ideas continue to spread via platforms like TikTok, and the secretary’s identity remains uncertain.

Read at www.theguardian.com