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Type A and hardiness

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Abstract

The study examined the relationship between the Type A behavior pattern and personality hardiness and predicted an interaction between the two that would be influential for illness onset. Type A and hardiness were found to be conceptually different and empirically independent factors. Under high stressful life events, male executives who were high in Type A and low in hardiness tended toward higher general illness scores than any other executives. Type A and hardiness emerge from this study as bases for extrinsic and intrinsic motivation, respectively.

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This work was supported in whole by NIMH Grant MH 28839 to Kobasa and Maddi. We wish to thank Robert R. Hilker, Jr., James Kennedy, Lorill Brown-Rezanka, Christine Hinze, and Mark C. Puccetti for their indispensable help.

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Kobasa, S.C., Maddi, S.R. & Zola, M.A. Type A and hardiness. J Behav Med 6, 41–51 (1983). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00845275

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