Overt and covert personality traits associated with coronary heart disease.

Some authors suggested the existence of contradictory traits in the personality pattern associated with coronary heart disease: while presenting overt, active, adult-like traits, coronary subjects would be, at a more covert or repressed level, characterized by passive and infantile tendencies. To test this hypothesis, coronary and control subjects were submitted to three types of personality questionnaire, each of them measuring the same four personality traits (seclusion, impulsiveness, dependence and passivity) which, in the adult individual, are considered by Murray's (1938) theory of personality as persisting from infancy. No difference appeared between the two groups on type 1 questionnaires, describing behavioural features of individuals outwardly displaying the four traits. On type 2 questionnaires, describing tastes and similar areas less subject to social norms, coronary subjects revealed themselves higher than control subjects for passivity (P less than 0.05). and dependence (P less than 0.05). Similarly, they were higher for passivity (P less than 0.05), dependence (P less than 0.001) and impulsiveness (P less than 0.05) on type 3 questionnaires describing symptoms expected to occur occasionally among adults having such traits. Supplementary scales also showed coronary subjects to be more ego-defensive (P less than 0.001) and more self-assertive (P less than 0.05) than controls. These data were considered as supporting the hypothesis.