Type A? Type B? Both.
Some people believe in horoscopes and astrology, other base beliefs in logic
December 2, 2016
In this time of newfangled crazes like BuzzFeed and other online quizzes and old(er)-school trends like daily horoscopes, there never seems to be an end of quick ways to definitively identify yourself.
Personality quizzes are particularly popular (be honest, we’ve all taken “What Disney Princess are you?”) The one we are focusing on today is based on the Type A/Type B personality theory.
Based on this theory, dedicated and ambitious (but also impatient) people are assigned to Type A and more relaxed, easy going people are Type B.
Type A personalities usually make lists and find satisfaction in marking things off of a “to-do” list they’ve made. Type Bs are creative when they problem solve, but are often less successful than their efficient counterparts.
The terms themselves come from a 1994 experiment by a tobacco company. The employers categorized workers in several companies by their working habits. The competitive and ambitious persons were placed in group A, with their less motivated peers were put in group B. The study concluded that people in group A were more likely to develop heart disease.
That may sound shocking, but I’m here to tell you to that you won’t get a heart attack just because you might like to make lists and keep your room tidy.
The first reason is because the experiment that started all of this hubbub about Type A and Type B was a documented attempt by the tobacco company to distance tobacco from heart disease. They believed that if they drew a line between Type A and heart disease, they could promote the idea that it was one’s personality and not toxins that caused cardiovascular issues. This finding has been debunked and has been replicated with much larger sample sizes, all affirming that your personality does not cause future heart disease.
The second is that you are not actually Type A or Type B. It is important to remember how fluid personality in this sense can be. When one feels a sense of worth or value, they’re likely to invest more time and focus, but when they get home they may lose that sense of stress and chill to the max.
If we think of personality types as venn diagram, we may all find solace in this split that was founded on unfortunately unethical science. At times we can all be tuned in and focused, knocking tasks out like Mohammed Ali, but at other times we all can take a seat on a couch and roll with the punches as they come.
If you lean towards Type A, make a new friend who likes to live a less structured daily life. And if you are Type B, maybe you can learn a few lessons from a friend who gets all of their homework done on time. Either way, I hope you learned something about what makes you tick, and maybe you’ll take tabloid horoscopes a little lighter from now on.