Friedman and Roseman, 1975, Study (Research)

The designed a study to investigate the suggestion that certain Types of personalities were more prone to coronary heart disease (CHD)

They studied 3,154 healthy Californian men. In a longditudinal study that lasted 8 years. They preformed structured interviews to discover the  type of personalities. There were there were two main catorgories: Type A who are people that are generally impatient, excessively competitive, very fast in movement and speech and more likely to suffer CHD. Type B personalities are generally: less competitive, easy going, tolerant, less hostile, more patient and less likely to suffer from CHD. They studied each of the participants health records to control for any lifestyle choices that may contribute to the likelihood of someone developing CHD.

The findings were very interesting: CHD was twice as predominant in Type A men than Type B men. 70% of those that developed CHD were Type A.

They concluded that behaviour patterns that matches Type A personalities makes us more vulnerable to CHD.

In part of my primary research I will carry out a simple version of this study on a small group of people, to identify how many people are Type A. This will enable me to perhaps target these Type A personalities in my PSB advert. My sample group was an oppertunity sample of 10 people; 5 were male and the other 5 female.

This was a sheet that I did in a psychology lesson, but felt it was entirely relevant to the research into my health awareness PSB. 

The most interesting findings of the survey were:

• Interestingly, 10 of 10 participants all scored between 12 - 17 meaning they actually qualify as X Types.

To conclude, I think that this survey doesn't provide enough variety in the results to have it influence my PSB advert. I think the results are as they are because of social desirability and demand characteristics; participants will alter their answers in order to answer in a way that they believe is socially acceptable. The demand characteristics that a participant may apply is they'll attempt to answer in a way that they believe the researcher wants them to answer and will alter their answers in accordance to this.