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Personality Traits And Heart Disease Risk LONDON -- August 22, 1997 -- A number of studies have found that your personality can increase or decrease your risk of a heart attack. For example, aggressive, highly competitive people with the so-called "type A" personality have been found in some, but not all, studies to be more likely to have a heart attack than people who are more easy-going, the so-called "type B" personality. In this week’s issue of The Lancet, researchers report that another personality trait, submissiveness, may also affect a person’s risk of a heart attack. The study was done by Dr. Martha Whiteman, and colleagues from the University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom. In the study, the researchers followed 809 men and 783 women aged 55 to 74 for five years. At the beginning of the study, the subjects had physical examinations and had a number of tests, including an electrocardiogram. They also completed questionnaires designed to identify people who tend to lack confidence and to prefer to stay in the background, people with so-called submissive personality traits. The questionnaires determined that on average the women tended to have more submissive personalities than men. At the end of the study, about 10 percent of the men and 4.5 percent of the women had had heart attacks. The researchers found that submissiveness had little effect on a man’s risk of having a heart attack. Among the women, however, the researchers found that those women who, according to the questionnaires, had more submissive personalities compared to other women in the study were nearly a third less likely to have had a heart attack. The finding indicates, the researchers conclude, that it is important for scientists studying heart disease to look at a wide variety of psychological risk factors, and "Since the finding was particularly evident in women," they add, "it is clear that both sexes need to be included in studies of coronary heart disease." E-mail this page to a friend or colleague! To print, use this version