Performance of type A (coronary-prone) men during and after exposure to uncontrollable noise and task failure.

The present study examined the effects of exposure to uncontrollable noise and task failure in Type A (coronary-prone) and Type B (nonprone) men. It was predicted that Type A subjects would initially react to such exposure with increased coping efforts, as indexed by improved task performance on pretreatment tasks, and that following exposure they would react with decreased coping, as measured by poor performance on a final task. Type B's were predicted to perform consistently throughout. Instead, the Type B subjects showed initial coping attempts during exposure to uncontrollability and showed decrease coping following exposure, whereas A's performed consistently throughout. It was concluded that Type A and B persons do indeed react differently to exposure to a threat to their control of a situation, but it was further concluded that this experimental paradigm may, at this time, lack the precision necessary to elucidate the psychological factors motivating the behavior of the coronary-prone individual.