Mention the term “Type A personality” and chances are an immediate image comes to mind. Your super driven boss, an annoying perfectionist to the end, or your competitive and highly organised friend, the one who manages to listen to a podcast, run 10kms and make bircher museli from scratch — all before 9am.
Type B? They’re the ones who are generally pretty cruisy, preferring to express themselves through emotion and creativity and experiencing lower stress levels as a result.
Type C represents people who appear quiet and laid back but are fighting a fire of anger and aggression inside, usually finding it a challenge to express their emotional side.
But what about Type D? No idea? According to psychology professor Susan Krauss Whitbourne, D stands for distressed. Type D people are generally anxious, stressed and potentially lonely, but ignore their feelings. As a result of their repressed emotion, and the mental health implications that come with this, they’re more likely to suffer from illnesses such as heart disease.
“Paradoxically enough, Type D individuals may not actually experience anxiety and depression in terms of mood state (how they feel) because they suppress their negative emotions,” writes Krauss Whitbourne. “Thus, as they try to reign in their negative feelings, they only exacerbate their risk of cardiac disease.”
Psychologist Johan Denollet first coined the Type D personality term, and came up with a questionnaire to help determine people who fall into this category.
Find out if you’re one:
Below are a number of statements that people often use to describe themselves. Read each one and choose the appropriate number next to that statement to indicate your answer. There are no right or wrong answers: Your own impression is the only thing that matters.
0 = false
1 = rather false
2 = neutral
3 = rather true
4 = true
1) I make contact easily when I meet people 0 1 2 3 4
2) I often make a fuss about unimportant things 0 1 2 3 4
3) I often talk to strangers 0 1 2 3 4
4) I often feel unhappy 0 1 2 3 4
5) I am often irritated 0 1 2 3 4
6) I often feel inhibited in social interactions 0 1 2 3 4
7) I take a gloomy view of things 0 1 2 3 4
8) I find it hard to start a conversation 0 1 2 3 4
9) I am often in a bad mood 0 1 2 3 4
10) I am a closed kind of person 0 1 2 3 4
11) I would rather keep people at a distance 0 1 2 3 4
12) I often find myself worrying about something 0 1 2 3 4
13) I am often down in the dumps 0 1 2 3 4
14) When socializing, I don’t find the right things to talk about 0 1 2 3 4
˝Negative affectivity˝ scale: Add scores for questions 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 12, and 13
˝Social inhibition˝ scale: Add scores for questions 1*, 3*, 6, 8, 10, 11, and 14
(*For scoring questions 1 and 3, if you circled 0, enter 4; if 1, enter 3; if 2, enter 2; if 3, enter 1; if 4, enter 0.)
You qualify as a type D personality if you scored 10 or higher on both negative affectivity and social inhibition scales.
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