MARRIAGE AND TYPE A PERSONALITIES: EARLY LIFE EXPERIENCES OF TYPE A’s
Is the Type A behavior pattern shaped by certain life experiences that are different from other people's? Many researchers have attempted to answer this question, and the quest for clarity on the issue continues. However, researchers generally agree that Type A behavior probably develops, at least in part, because the childhood environment revolves around the following family patterns:
• Parents are rather unloving and unpredictable in their reactions to the child's behavior.
• Parental approval is given only if the child performs exceptionally.
• Parents pay attention mainly to outcome, or to the product of the child's efforts, rather than respond with affirming attention to the child.
• Parents are extremely critical of any behavior on the part of the child that does not live up to their expectations.
• Parents model behavior for the child and verbally drive the child with messages to be strong, be perfect, try harder, and hurry up.
• One parent may have a stronger influence than the other. Male Type A's may have mothers who delivered the messages and processes described above, and who withheld any unconditional expression of love and affirmation. Female Type A's may have fathers who were critical or absent; the father of a female Type A may also have been a "failed hero" because of his own problems with positive adjustment (for example, he may have been alcoholic or a financial failure, and so on).
In short, researchers suggest that Type A individuals tend to come from families with demanding, critical parents. Type A individuals seem to have had relatively little experience in being unconditionally loved, nurturingly affirmed and soothed, and gently taught necessary lessons, all of which develop a calming sense of mastery in living life.
Remember that these are the same people who are born with an overreactive alarm branch of the central nervous system and an underactive calming nervous system response. This combination of
(1) physical predisposition to experience anxiety and agitation and
(2) critical family environment is thought to lead to the development of internal negative self-evaluation. Thus is born the Type A individual's greatest secret: at the core of this whirlwind of behavioral action and apparent power lie negative self-esteem and pervasive anxiety.
Of course, the family environment is not totally responsible for personality development. The effects of peers and of such settings as school environments also have much to do with how we learn to cope. It often seems, though, that by secondary school age, the behavior styles that ultimately blossom into Type A syndromes begin to solidify. Type A boys are likely to compensate for an underlying negative sense of self by focusing on achievements—an endeavor that is often blatantly encouraged by society in general, regardless of what is happening at home. Early in life, such kids begin what will develop into a chronic struggle to do more than time allows. This hurry sickness may increase the sense of urgency that underlies the eventual development of the aggressive, free-floating hostility that many Type A's eventually demonstrate.
Much of this characterization of how the Type A behavior pattern develops is speculative. Many Type A's come from families that are quite different from any that have been described. Furthermore, many individuals go through family and life experiences of the sorts that have been mentioned without developing this pattern of coping.
Two general points emerge from this discussion. First, I strongly believe that insecurity and anxiety—not anger, grandiosity, or confidence—are the factors that underlie the Type A style of coping. Second, the interplay between physiological reactivity and psychosocial experiences is central in the development of Type A behavior pattern.
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