ABSTRACT
In the 1950s, Friedman and Rosenman (1959) observed that, compared to the noncardiac patients they were treating, those suffering from cardiac disorders seemed to present a particular constellation of behavioral characteristics. Unsatisfied with the predictive validity of traditional risk factors for coronary heart disease (e.g., hypertension, serum cholesterol level, and smoking), Friedman and Rosenman (1974) focused on the systematic observation of that collection of behaviors now identified as the Type A Pattern. They described Pattern A as an “action-emotion complex that can be observed in a person who is aggressively involved in a chronic, incessant struggle to achieve more and more in less and less time, and if required to do so, against the opposing efforts of other things and of other persons” (p. 67).
