Disentangling Type A Behavior: The Roles of Ambition, Insensitivity, and Anxiety

This study identified stable components of Type A behavior as usually defined, and examined their relationships with more traditional psychological constructs. Overall scores on the most popular Type A measure (a version of the Jenkins Activity Survey) were moderately associated with ambition but largely unrelated to measures of adjustment. An item analysis yielded s~~bcomponents of Drivenness and lnvolvement. Drivenness was unrelated to ambition, but was positively related to anxiety and negatively related to interpersonal perceptiveness. lnvolvement was positively related to ambition and to interpersonal competence. It is suggested that the Jenkins Activity Sur-vey measures a heterogeneous mixture of constructive commitment and self-defeating responses that clouds its psychological interpretation.