Efforts to Excel and the Type A Behavior Pattern in Children

Abstract

The present paper reports 2 experiments which investigate Type A and Type B children's efforts to achieve. The Type A behavior pattern is a major risk factor for coronary heart disease in adulthood and is characterized by extremes of achievement-striving, impatience-aggression, and easily aroused hostility. Experiment 1 required fourth graders to perform a series of simple arithmetic problems with or without an explicit time deadline. Results showed that, in general, Type A's solved more problems than did Type B's during the 5 min of the experiment. This effect was mainly due to Type A's outperforming Type B's in the no-deadline condition. Because the results could have been due to A's simply being more competent in solving arithmetic problems than B's, we conducted a second experiment using a task on which A's and B's were equally capable. In experiment 2, sixth-grade boys were asked to hold a weight for a predetermined length of time. The weight varied according to a premeasure of their maximal hand strength. In fact, they were never told to stop. Results revealed that Type A's held the weight 50% longer than Type B's. They also underreported their subjective fatigue relative to the effort they expended. These findings suggest that Type A children, similar to their adult counterparts, make greater efforts to excel than B's on tasks that have ambiguous performance criteria. The results are discussed in terms of the achievement literature, and the implications of underreporting fatigue for coronary risk are outlined.

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