TYPE-A BEHAVIOR PATTERN, EXTROVERSION, NEUROTICISM AND PSYCHOLOGICAL DISTRESS

The factorial structure of a nine-item Framingham Type A Scale, the 30-item General Health Questionnaire, the 57-item Eysenck Personality Inventory and a 20-item checklist of predominantly physical symptoms was examined in a nationally representative sample of 3065 women and 2520 men. For both women and men, the six principal components extracted from the 116 items and orthogonally rotated clearly corresponded to the six variables of psychological distress, neuroticism, symptoms, extraversion, the Lie scale and the Type A behaviour pattern. While Type A was positively correlated with neuroticism, psychological distress, extraversion and symptoms, there was no support for the idea that it could be more parsimoniously subsumed under these variables. Type A also showed a significant but very small positive association with self-reported coronary heart disease in men, although the correlations between heart disease and psychological distress, neuroticism and symptoms were more positive.