Time Urgency and Coronary-Prone Behavior: The Effectiveness of a Behavior Pattern

Previous research has implicated time urgency as a component of coronary-prone behavior. Arguments of Type A persons often suggest that their time-urgent stylistics are necessary to guarantee success, particularly in complex and/or managerial tasks. Experimentally induced time urgency was utilized in a simulated complex managerial task with unselected subjects to test the validity of such an assumption. It was found that time urgency interacts with information load to produce performance outcome. Moderately complex planning and decision making was found to be optimal at intermediate load levels, but disintegrated when time urgency increased to high levels. Similar results were obtained for long-term complex planning. Retaliatory decision making increased with load. Higher levels of time urgency resulted in greater retaliatory activity. It is concluded that managerial activities that require complex decision making and long-term future planning are hindered rather than aided by time urgency.