Gender and age differences in coronary-prone behavior: A cross-cultural study

To date, the majority of coronary-prone behavior studies have been conducted with white, middle-aged American men in executive careers. While early research examined the relationship between Type A behavior and coronary disease, more recent studies have focused on the Aggression/Hostility component of Type A. This study focuses on the Aggression/Hostility component in three different age groups of 2520 women and men residing in the USA, Italy, and Poland. The assessment of coronary-prone behavior was based on a self-report measure, the Adolescent/Adult Type A Behavior Scale, Because the US culture encourages self-assertion and individualism, we anticipated that US men would score highest on the Aggression subscale and this was borne out by the data. US men also had higher global Type A scores than US women, while no gender differences for this variable were found in the Italian and Polish samples. Overall, older adults had lower global Type A and Aggression scores when compared to students and adolescents. Interestingly, in the Italian and Polish samples, women were more aggressive than men. Also, Polish women reported higher Aggression scores than women from Italy and the US. Implications of these findings for future research are discussed.