ANTECEDENTS OF THE TYPE A BEHAVIOR PATTERN

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The major aims of our ongoing research program have been: (a) to identify the early emergence and stability of children's Type A behaviors and their associated psychophysiological responses to stress, which are considered to be risk factors for coronary artery disease in adults; and (b) to specify their determinants, with an emphasis on familial factors. Our four next steps in research will build on previous findings, but also depart from previous efforts in strategy and level of analysis. First, to estimate the stability of hostility, anger expression, and stress-induced cardiovascular responses in childhood, we propose to test in 1988-90 a maximum of 217 children, who have been tested on these dimensions in 1983-85. Second, because few data are available in adults or children on the validity of questionnaire/interview measures of hostility and anger expression, and laboratory stress-induced cardiovascular responses, we plan to compare those measures to conceptually relevant behaviors and psychophysiological responses exhibited during conflictual interactions amongst 50 children and 100 adults. Third, in a potential sample of 217 children and 260 adults, we wish to test the hypothesis that behavioral and psychophysiological attributes measured in 1983-85 predict casual blood pressure measured in 1990-92, controlling for initial casual blood pressure. Fourth, we propose to characterize in 50 families the patterns of behaviors and psychophysiological responses during interactions in which conflict and disagreement occur and to relate those patterns to children's level of hostility and mode of anger expression in both concurrent and longitudinal analyses. The proposed research attempts to correct a major conceptual failing in previous investigations in adults and children of Type A behaviors and their associated psychophysiological responses by extending studies of these phenomena beyond the context of achievement to important social interactions in which conceptually relevant human emotions, like anger, do occur.