Key Takeaways
- People with Type A personality traits tend to be competitive, ambitious, and highly organized.
- These traits can support success but can create stress and may increase certain health risks.
- Finding balance and managing stress helps people with Type A traits stay healthy.
A Type A personality is characterized by traits like competitiveness, drive, ambition, and urgency. People with this personality type are achievement-oriented, fast-paced, and impatient. They are often good at reaching their goals, but they may also have increased stress and other health risks.
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Understanding Type A Personality Traits
You may have heard people say they are “Type A.” When people say this, they likely mean they are ambitious, organized, perfectionistic, and high-achieving. Since researchers started studying Type A personality, beginning with cardiologists Meyer Friedman and Ray Rosenman in the 1950s, it’s become a household term.
While the term “Type A” is thrown around often, it’s not always fully known what specific characteristics make up Type A personality, even among experts. For some people, the term applies to rude and impatient people. Others see workaholics as Type A. Many see competitiveness as the main characteristic.
Illustration by Cindy Chung, Verywell
Type A Personality Test
If you’re wondering whether your personality has Type A characteristics, try taking our online quiz.
According to research, the following are the hallmark characteristics of Type A Behavior Pattern (TABP):
- Time urgency and impatience: Time urgency and impatience, as demonstrated by people who, among other things, get frustrated while waiting in line, interrupt others often, walk or talk at a rapid pace, and are always painfully aware of the time and how little they have to spare.
- Free-floating hostility or aggressiveness: Free-floating hostility or aggressiveness is an additional trait of TABP. It may manifest as impatience, rudeness, being easily upset over small things, or “having a short fuse,” for example.
- Competitiveness: People with Type A behavior feel the need to win at everything, from work to relationships, even if these activities aren’t inherently competitive.
- Strong achievement orientation: Type A people tend to get their feelings of self-worth from what they achieve. They are easily frustrated when they face setbacks or obstacles. They are primarily focused on finishing tasks and achieving their goals.
- Need for dominance: Many Type A people try to show dominance in business and personal interactions, disregarding the wishes and needs of others in favor of their own. They tend to take on leadership roles where they can take control of the group and ensure that things are done the way they want them to be.
Someone with a Type A personality may be very successful and achieve a lot in life. They may also be organized and efficient, both in their personal and professional life. However, they may become stressed more easily when things become chaotic. They might prioritize over-achieving over self-care.
How Situations Bring Out Type A Traits
While many personality traits, such as extroversion, are innate, most researchers believe that Type A personality characteristics are more of a reaction to environmental factors, or tendencies toward certain behaviors, and are influenced by situations, including culture and job structure.
For example, many jobs put heavy demands on time, making it necessary for workers to be very concerned with getting things done quickly to perform at work. Similarly, some workplaces put heavy penalties on mistakes, so efficiency and achievement become extremely important. Other jobs just create more stress, making people less patient, more stressed, and more prone to Type A behaviors.
Do Type A Personalities Have Anxiety?
People with Type A characteristics may have higher anxiety levels than other personality types, specifically when they are overwhelmed. They may experience more job-related stress, as they put more pressure on themselves to achieve, but are less satisfied with their work.
Some people have a natural tendency toward being more intense. This tendency can be increased by environmental stress or reduced by conscious effort and lifestyle changes.
Health Risks Linked to Type A Personality Traits
There are certain characteristics associated with Type A personalities that can take a toll on health and lifestyle. Type A personalities may have challenges including:
- Hypertension: Although the relationship between personality types and high blood pressure is complex, there has been some association between hypertension and the vulnerability to stress that people with Type A personalities experience.
- Heart disease: Some research shows that TABP (specifically anger and hostility) may increase the risk of coronary heart disease. However, other analyses have failed to confirm this.
- Job stress: Type A people often have stressful, demanding jobs (and sometimes the jobs create the Type A behavior), which can lead to stress-related health problems.
- Social isolation: Those with TABP may alienate others or spend too much time on work and focus too little on relationships, putting them at risk for social isolation and the increased stress that comes with it.
Physical Characteristics
Years of Type A behavior and stress can prompt physical characteristics and changes, including:
- Facial tension (tight lips, clenched jaw, etc.)
- Tongue clicking or teeth grinding
- Dark circles under the eyes
- Facial sweating (on forehead or upper lip)
How Type A Traits Compare to Other Personality Types
- Type A personality traits, including competitiveness, time urgency, and a tendency toward workaholism, can be beneficial for career success.
- Type B personalities tend to be less competitive. This doesn’t mean that Type Bs don’t like to achieve. They work hard and take pride in their accomplishments, but don’t attach the same stress to their outcomes if they don’t come in first or achieve the most. Type Bs are more creative and low-stress by nature. Fortunately, some of this relaxed perspective can be learned and developed.
- Type C personalities tend to be more passive; they may put the needs of others before their own and repress any negative emotions.
- Type D (the D is for “distressed”) is characterized by negative emotions like worry and an attempt to inhibit these emotions, while avoiding social interaction.
Each personality type can experience unique challenges that may cause stress and potentially negatively impact health. Fortunately, there are effective ways to cope with negativity, excessive worry, and inhibition.
Why Some Critics Say the Types Are Outdated
Research from the University of Toronto published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology suggests that categorizing people’s personalities into Type A, B, C, or D is an outdated practice.
Instead of considering the personalities as separate “types,” the researchers suggest it’s more useful to consider them as groups of traits that people possess.
It may be helpful to consider personalities as made up of nuanced characteristics, rather than lumping people into a specific personality type. This helps paint a more accurate picture of the strengths and weaknesses of separate traits, rather than viewing any one personality type as “good” or “bad.”
For instance, to say that Type A personalities are at a greater risk for health problems is not accurate. It’s actually specific traits associated with Type A personalities—such as impatience, for instance—that can lead to higher stress levels, and in turn, put someone at a greater risk of health problems.
On the other hand, Type A personalities possess plenty of traits that promote good health—such as being achievement-oriented—which can lead to higher levels of success and happiness.
How to Manage Type A Personality
There’s nothing wrong with identifying as Type A. In fact, there are plenty of benefits. However, if you find that you’re prone to becoming over-stressed, overwhelmed, and exhausted by certain aspects of your personality, the following tips can help you gain a new approach that better serves your overall health.
Change Your Work Life
Alter certain factors in your work life to make your job less stressful and demanding and more rewarding. For example, you can try to enjoy the meaning you attach to your work rather than focusing primarily on outcomes.
If your job has been stressful enough to affect your health, talk to your boss about expectations to be sure that it is possible to meet them with a reasonable level of work.
It’s also helpful to find ways to strike a healthy work-life balance. Set boundaries around work time and the rest of your life so that you have more time to enjoy leisure time and hobbies.
Change Thought Patterns
Though it takes practice, you can change your thinking patterns to more positive ones. This helps you develop trust in yourself and those around you and can soften Type A tendencies.
For example, when you feel inadequate or make mistakes, focus more heavily on what you are doing well. When you find yourself using negative self-talk, talk to yourself the way you would a good friend.
Fake It ‘Til You Make It
Sometimes you can act your way into new habits. Even if you don’t always feel calm and serene, if you make a conscious choice to try to slow yourself down and be more patient with people, that behavior will most likely become more of a habit and begin to come more easily to you.
This is not the same as being completely detached from awareness of your feelings, or keeping them bottled up until you eventually explode. Rather, focus on making changes in your behavior in conjunction with emotion-oriented strategies, and you should make progress.
Start a Journal
The practice of keeping a journal has many proven benefits for your stress level and overall health. It can also be a helpful practice in softening Type A characteristics, especially if done right. To use your journal as an instrument of change:
- Keep a record of how many times you lose your temper in a day, treat people rudely, or feel overwhelmed by frustration. Becoming more aware of your tendencies and what triggers reactions can be a valuable step in changing your patterns.
- Write about your feelings. This helps you process them and takes some of the intensity from them, so that they are less consuming.
- Write about solutions. Solving problems on paper (rather than obsessing about them in your head) can help you to feel less overwhelmed by them. You can also look back through your journal to remember old ideas that might help solve new problems.
Face Your Fears
This may sound crazy, but a good way to work past Type A tendencies is to give yourself an extra dose of what frustrates you to show yourself that it’s not so bad. The more you expose yourself to such situations, the less distressing and intolerable they will seem.
For example, some therapists recommend that you pick long lines in the grocery store just to show yourself that you can survive the frustration of waiting. The threat of having to wait in a longer line may help you be more patient in a shorter one.
Make It a Game
When you’re frustrated while stuck in traffic, make a game out of it and count what frustrates you. The same can be done for life in general. If you see how many frustrating things you can playfully tally, you’ll almost look forward to people’s quirks.
Take a Breath
The next time you’re about to scream, why not take that deep breath and, instead, just breathe it out? When you feel you’re about to explode, a few deep, slow breaths can do wonders! Breathing exercises are a stress reliever you can use anywhere. Research has shown that these types of exercises can help reduce feelings of stress and anxiety.
Love Your Pets
Pets have many stress management and health benefits and can help provide you with the extra calm you need. Walking a dog can be relaxing and social, get you out into nature (or at least out of the office), and provide exercise (another stress reliever) as well.
Caring for an animal and receiving its unconditional love can connect you with the best parts of your humanity. Even watching aquarium fish can have a measurable effect on blood pressure.
Work in Your Garden
Getting out into the sunshine, beautifying your yard, and getting back in touch with nature are some of the benefits of gardening. It all adds up to some great stress relief. This tension-taming tool can reduce overall stress and teach you to take it easy a little more, softening your Type A tendencies.
