In the 1950s, a secretary in a San Francisco medical office noticed something weird: some of the chairs in the waiting room needed to be reupholstered more frequently than others. Patients with coronary disease, she realised, nearly always arrived on time and gravitated towards hard upholstered chairs rather than comfy sofas. They’d then sit on the edge of the chair, fidget, and aggressively leap up when their names were called.
This insight took on a life of its own. First it helped inspire the cardiologists she reportedly mentioned it to – Dr Ray Rosenman and Dr Meyer Friedman, who wrote a 1959 paper that essentially invented the idea of a “type A” personality. It classified competitive, productivity-obsessed workaholics as demonstrating “overt behaviour pattern A”, and argued they were more likely to get heart attacks. They later wrote a book, Type A Behaviour and Your Heart, which became a bestseller. Familiar story, eh? A woman has an insight which is then monetised by two men.
