Perceptualand Motor Skills, 1992, 74, 723-726.
O Perceptual and Motor Skills 1992
SLEEP PARAMETERS OF TYPE A AND B SCORING COLLEGE STUDENTS ' DAVID KOULACK AND MARC NESCA Unioersiby of Manitoba Summary.-162 subjects, half of whom scored between 310 and 420 and half of whom scored between 184 and 256 on the Survey of Work Style questionnaire, participated in this study. The former group was defined as Type A scorers and the latter as Type B scorers. Type A scorers had more trouble falling asleep, had more nightmares, and spent less time asleep than did Type B scorers. However, there was no difference between the two groups in the amount of dream recall or on the morningness/eveningness continuum.
Recently we reported differences in dream content between Type A and B scoring college students (Nesca & Koulack, 1991). We found that the Type A scorers showed greater general activity, higher activity of the self, and a greater incidence of misfortunes in their dreams than did the Type B scorers. These results are in keeping with the notion that there is continuity between waking experience and dream content (Koulack, 1991). It has been suggested elsewhere (e.g., Goodenough, Witkin, Koulack, & Cohen, 1975; Koulack, 1970, 1991; Koulack, Prevost, & De Koninck, 1985; Wright & Koulack, 1987) that waking experience may also alter some other dimensions of sleep and dreaming. To examine this possibility we compared Type A and B scoring college students along a number of sleep and dream parameters. Given their time urgency and relatively stressful Lifestyles (Friedman & Rosenman, 1977), we expected that Type A scorers would report less total sleep time and more trouble falling asleep than Type B scorers. Based on the notion of continuity between waking and dreaming, we also expected that Type A scorers would be more likely to experience nightmares than Type B scorers. In addition, our study provided an opportunity to replicate the finding that Type A scorers are also likely to be "morning" types (Davis, Hill, Wdkup, & Russin, 1986).
PROCEDURE The subjects were 323 volunteers from a course in introductory psychology at the University of Manitoba. They received course credits for their participation in the study. They completed the Horne and Ostberg (1976)
This research was supported in part by rants from the Social Science and Humanities Rel a r c h Council of Canada and the ~ a n i t o % Health a Research C o u n d . We thank Tanya Nesca for her help in scoring the Survey of Work Style questionnaires. Requests for reprints should be sent to Dr. David Koulack, Department of Psychology, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada R3T 2N2.
724
D.KOULACK
&
M.NESCA
Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire and a standardized sleep and medical questionnaire used in previous studies (e.g., De Koninck & Koulack, 1975) and the Survey of Work Style questionnaire (Mavriogiannis & Jackson, 1987). The Survey of Work Style questionnaire has six scales: impatience, anger, work involvement, time urgency, job dissatisfaction, and competitiveness. Each of the 96 questions is scored on a five-point scale. The scores are summed to arrive at a final total. The Survey of Work Style questionnaire is significantly related to the Jenkins Activity Survey, with the reliability of its scales being 0.90 (Mavriogiannis & Jackson, 1987). I n addition, the classification accuracy was 92.5% for Type A scorers when compared with that for the Rosenman Structured Interview Measure (Mavriogiannis & Jackson, 1987). An upper-lower quartile split on the Survey of Work Style questionnaire provided two groups of 8 1 subjects each. The mean score for the Type A scorers was 320.5 (range = 301-403, SD = 18.0) while the mean score for the Type B scorers was 235.8 (range = 184-256, SD = 15.0). The Type A scorers were 36 women and 45 men, and the Type B scorers were 42 women and 39 men. The likelihood of experiencing nightmares, having difficulty falling asleep, and having a dream were assessed along a 7-point scale in Likert format, ranging from never (1) to always (7).
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION The data were analyzed according to the Games and Howell (1976) procedure for pairwise multiple comparisons. This procedure was deemed ideal insofar as it allows control of the experiment-wise alpha level over an unlimited number of pairwise comparisons, while also being robust to variance heterogeneity. As expected, Type A scorers reported having more nightmares, more trouble falling asleep, and less total sleep time than Type B scorers. Although there was no significant difference between the two groups on their bedtimes or wake-up times, as might be expected from the difference in total sleep time, the Type A scorers tended to go to bed slightly later than the Type B scorers (12 AM vs 11:45 PM) and get up slightly earlier (7:30 AM vs 7:45 AM). Finally, the groups did not differ on the morningness/eveningness dimension or on their ability to recall dreams. These data are summarized in Table 1. This constellation of results is particularly interesting in light of the differences described between Type A and B individuals. Type A people are characterized as having a strong sense of urgency, excessive aggressiveness, a high need to achieve, and as being extremely competitive. O n the other hand, Type B individuals rarely d o w themselves to be rushed, preferring a
725
UNDERGRADUATES: SLEEP PARAMETERS/TYPE A-B SCORES TABLE 1
SLEEPPARAMETERS OF TYPEA
AND
B S C O ~ SUBJECTS: G MEANSAND STANDARD DEVIATIONS
Morningness/Eveningness Dream Recall/Week Nightmares Trouble Falling Asleep Total Sleeo Time (hr.)
Type B
Type A
Measure
M
.SD
M
SD
46.2 3.5 0.9 3.8 7.5
8.7 1.3 1.1* l.6t l.lt
47.0 3.6 0.6 3.1 8.0
9.7
1.6 .8
1.5 1.0
less hectic pace than characterizes Type A people (Friedman & Rosenman, 1977). Since the waking life of Type A people has been judged to be more stressful than that of Type B individuals, the observation that our student subjects who scored as Type A report more difficulty in falling asleep than their Type B scoring peers is consistent with that evaluation. Such difficulty is often associated with the experience of stress during waking life (e.g., Koulack, 1991; Koulack, LeBow, & Church, 1976; Koulack, Prevost, & De Koninck, 1985; Wright & Koulack, 1987). Similarly, the report of greater numbers of nightmares by Type A scorers than by Type B scorers is consistent with work of previous researchers who reported that Type A scorers had more negative dreams (Hicks, Chancellor, & Clark, 1987) and more misfortunes in their dreams (Nesca & Koulack, 1991) than Type B scorers. I t is also consistent with the notion that waking stress plays a role in the nature of subsequent dream content and its concomitant affect (Koulack, 1991). I n addition, the finding that Type A scorers slept an average of one-half hour less per night than Type B scorers is consistent with a picture of Type A individuals being self-driven people. The fact that they are not also "morning" people is only slightly surprising in that in general extremes along the morningness/eveningness dimension are hard to find (Nesca, 1989). I n sum, then, our observations dovetail nicely with a host of others which suggest an interplay between our waking and sleeping lives (Kodack, 1991). Specifically, the stress associated with the waking experience of Type A scorers seems to be reflected in a higher incidence of trouble falling asleep and nightmares than found in Type B scorers; and, not too surprisingly given the "driven" quality of their life style, Type A scorers seem to permit themselves less sleep than d o Type B scorers. REFERENCES & RUSSIN, R. (1986) The relationship between Type A-B behavior pattern and the morning-evening personality in college students. College Srudents Journal, 20, 417-419.
DAVIS, S. F., HILL,S., WALKUP,T.,
726
D. KOULACK & M. NESCA
J. M., & KOULACK, D. (1975) Dream content and adaptation to a stressful stimuDE KONINCK, lus situation. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 84, 250-260. FREDMAN, M., & ROSENMAN, R. H. (1977) The key cause: Type-A behavior patterns. I n A. Monat & R. S. Lazarus (Eds.), Stress and coping. New York: Columbia Univer. Press. Pp. 201-212. GAMES,P. A , , & HOWELL,J. F. (1976) Pairwise multiple corn arison procedures with unequal ns and/or variances: a Monte Carlo study. Journal of ~ k c a t i o n a Statistics, l 1, 113-125. GOODENOUGH, D. R., W m , H. A , , KOULACK, D., & COHEN,H. (1975) The effects of stress films on dream affect and on respiration and eye-movement activity during rapid-eye movement sleep. Psychophysiology, 12, 313-320. HICKS,R. A , , CHANCELLOR, C., & CLARK,T. (1987) The valence of dreams reported by Type AB college students. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 65, 748-750. HORNE, J. A , , & OSTBERG,0. (1976) A self-assessment questionnaire to determine morningness-eveningness in human circadian rhythms. International Journal of Chronobiology, 4, 97-110. KOULACK, D. (1970) Effects of thirst on the sleep cycle. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 151, 143-145. KOULACK, D. (1991) To catch a dream: explorations of dreaming. Albany, N Y State Univer. of New York Press. KOULACK,D., LEBOW, M. D., & CHURCH,M. (1976) The effect of desensitization on the sleep and dreams of a phobic subject. Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science, 8, 418421. KOULACK,D., PREVOST,F., & DE KONINCK,J. (1985) Sleep, dreaming and adaptation to an ego-threatening intellectual activity. Sleep, 8, 244-253. MAVRIOGIANNIS, A,, & JACKSON, D. N . (1987) Empirical evaluation of the Survey of Work Styles: a profile measure of Type-A behavior. Pa er presented at a conference on Applications of Individual Differences in Stress ancf ~ e a l t hPsychology, Winnipeg, Manitoba, March. NESCA, M. (1989) T pe A-B differences in manifest dream content. (Unpublished honours thesis, Univer. o r ~ a n i t o b a ) NESCA,M., & KOULACK,D. (1991) Dream content and mood of Type A-B college students. Canadian Journal of Behauioural Science, 23, 788-793. WRIGHT, J . , & KOULACK,D. (1987) Dreams and contemporary stress: a dsruption-avoidance-adaptation model. Skep, 10, 172-179. Accepted March 16, 1992.
O Perceptual and Motor Skills 1992
SLEEP PARAMETERS OF TYPE A AND B SCORING COLLEGE STUDENTS ' DAVID KOULACK AND MARC NESCA Unioersiby of Manitoba Summary.-162 subjects, half of whom scored between 310 and 420 and half of whom scored between 184 and 256 on the Survey of Work Style questionnaire, participated in this study. The former group was defined as Type A scorers and the latter as Type B scorers. Type A scorers had more trouble falling asleep, had more nightmares, and spent less time asleep than did Type B scorers. However, there was no difference between the two groups in the amount of dream recall or on the morningness/eveningness continuum.
Recently we reported differences in dream content between Type A and B scoring college students (Nesca & Koulack, 1991). We found that the Type A scorers showed greater general activity, higher activity of the self, and a greater incidence of misfortunes in their dreams than did the Type B scorers. These results are in keeping with the notion that there is continuity between waking experience and dream content (Koulack, 1991). It has been suggested elsewhere (e.g., Goodenough, Witkin, Koulack, & Cohen, 1975; Koulack, 1970, 1991; Koulack, Prevost, & De Koninck, 1985; Wright & Koulack, 1987) that waking experience may also alter some other dimensions of sleep and dreaming. To examine this possibility we compared Type A and B scoring college students along a number of sleep and dream parameters. Given their time urgency and relatively stressful Lifestyles (Friedman & Rosenman, 1977), we expected that Type A scorers would report less total sleep time and more trouble falling asleep than Type B scorers. Based on the notion of continuity between waking and dreaming, we also expected that Type A scorers would be more likely to experience nightmares than Type B scorers. In addition, our study provided an opportunity to replicate the finding that Type A scorers are also likely to be "morning" types (Davis, Hill, Wdkup, & Russin, 1986).
PROCEDURE The subjects were 323 volunteers from a course in introductory psychology at the University of Manitoba. They received course credits for their participation in the study. They completed the Horne and Ostberg (1976)
This research was supported in part by rants from the Social Science and Humanities Rel a r c h Council of Canada and the ~ a n i t o % Health a Research C o u n d . We thank Tanya Nesca for her help in scoring the Survey of Work Style questionnaires. Requests for reprints should be sent to Dr. David Koulack, Department of Psychology, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada R3T 2N2.
724
D.KOULACK
&
M.NESCA
Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire and a standardized sleep and medical questionnaire used in previous studies (e.g., De Koninck & Koulack, 1975) and the Survey of Work Style questionnaire (Mavriogiannis & Jackson, 1987). The Survey of Work Style questionnaire has six scales: impatience, anger, work involvement, time urgency, job dissatisfaction, and competitiveness. Each of the 96 questions is scored on a five-point scale. The scores are summed to arrive at a final total. The Survey of Work Style questionnaire is significantly related to the Jenkins Activity Survey, with the reliability of its scales being 0.90 (Mavriogiannis & Jackson, 1987). I n addition, the classification accuracy was 92.5% for Type A scorers when compared with that for the Rosenman Structured Interview Measure (Mavriogiannis & Jackson, 1987). An upper-lower quartile split on the Survey of Work Style questionnaire provided two groups of 8 1 subjects each. The mean score for the Type A scorers was 320.5 (range = 301-403, SD = 18.0) while the mean score for the Type B scorers was 235.8 (range = 184-256, SD = 15.0). The Type A scorers were 36 women and 45 men, and the Type B scorers were 42 women and 39 men. The likelihood of experiencing nightmares, having difficulty falling asleep, and having a dream were assessed along a 7-point scale in Likert format, ranging from never (1) to always (7).
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION The data were analyzed according to the Games and Howell (1976) procedure for pairwise multiple comparisons. This procedure was deemed ideal insofar as it allows control of the experiment-wise alpha level over an unlimited number of pairwise comparisons, while also being robust to variance heterogeneity. As expected, Type A scorers reported having more nightmares, more trouble falling asleep, and less total sleep time than Type B scorers. Although there was no significant difference between the two groups on their bedtimes or wake-up times, as might be expected from the difference in total sleep time, the Type A scorers tended to go to bed slightly later than the Type B scorers (12 AM vs 11:45 PM) and get up slightly earlier (7:30 AM vs 7:45 AM). Finally, the groups did not differ on the morningness/eveningness dimension or on their ability to recall dreams. These data are summarized in Table 1. This constellation of results is particularly interesting in light of the differences described between Type A and B individuals. Type A people are characterized as having a strong sense of urgency, excessive aggressiveness, a high need to achieve, and as being extremely competitive. O n the other hand, Type B individuals rarely d o w themselves to be rushed, preferring a
725
UNDERGRADUATES: SLEEP PARAMETERS/TYPE A-B SCORES TABLE 1
SLEEPPARAMETERS OF TYPEA
AND
B S C O ~ SUBJECTS: G MEANSAND STANDARD DEVIATIONS
Morningness/Eveningness Dream Recall/Week Nightmares Trouble Falling Asleep Total Sleeo Time (hr.)
Type B
Type A
Measure
M
.SD
M
SD
46.2 3.5 0.9 3.8 7.5
8.7 1.3 1.1* l.6t l.lt
47.0 3.6 0.6 3.1 8.0
9.7
1.6 .8
1.5 1.0
less hectic pace than characterizes Type A people (Friedman & Rosenman, 1977). Since the waking life of Type A people has been judged to be more stressful than that of Type B individuals, the observation that our student subjects who scored as Type A report more difficulty in falling asleep than their Type B scoring peers is consistent with that evaluation. Such difficulty is often associated with the experience of stress during waking life (e.g., Koulack, 1991; Koulack, LeBow, & Church, 1976; Koulack, Prevost, & De Koninck, 1985; Wright & Koulack, 1987). Similarly, the report of greater numbers of nightmares by Type A scorers than by Type B scorers is consistent with work of previous researchers who reported that Type A scorers had more negative dreams (Hicks, Chancellor, & Clark, 1987) and more misfortunes in their dreams (Nesca & Koulack, 1991) than Type B scorers. I t is also consistent with the notion that waking stress plays a role in the nature of subsequent dream content and its concomitant affect (Koulack, 1991). I n addition, the finding that Type A scorers slept an average of one-half hour less per night than Type B scorers is consistent with a picture of Type A individuals being self-driven people. The fact that they are not also "morning" people is only slightly surprising in that in general extremes along the morningness/eveningness dimension are hard to find (Nesca, 1989). I n sum, then, our observations dovetail nicely with a host of others which suggest an interplay between our waking and sleeping lives (Kodack, 1991). Specifically, the stress associated with the waking experience of Type A scorers seems to be reflected in a higher incidence of trouble falling asleep and nightmares than found in Type B scorers; and, not too surprisingly given the "driven" quality of their life style, Type A scorers seem to permit themselves less sleep than d o Type B scorers. REFERENCES & RUSSIN, R. (1986) The relationship between Type A-B behavior pattern and the morning-evening personality in college students. College Srudents Journal, 20, 417-419.
DAVIS, S. F., HILL,S., WALKUP,T.,
726
D. KOULACK & M. NESCA
J. M., & KOULACK, D. (1975) Dream content and adaptation to a stressful stimuDE KONINCK, lus situation. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 84, 250-260. FREDMAN, M., & ROSENMAN, R. H. (1977) The key cause: Type-A behavior patterns. I n A. Monat & R. S. Lazarus (Eds.), Stress and coping. New York: Columbia Univer. Press. Pp. 201-212. GAMES,P. A , , & HOWELL,J. F. (1976) Pairwise multiple corn arison procedures with unequal ns and/or variances: a Monte Carlo study. Journal of ~ k c a t i o n a Statistics, l 1, 113-125. GOODENOUGH, D. R., W m , H. A , , KOULACK, D., & COHEN,H. (1975) The effects of stress films on dream affect and on respiration and eye-movement activity during rapid-eye movement sleep. Psychophysiology, 12, 313-320. HICKS,R. A , , CHANCELLOR, C., & CLARK,T. (1987) The valence of dreams reported by Type AB college students. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 65, 748-750. HORNE, J. A , , & OSTBERG,0. (1976) A self-assessment questionnaire to determine morningness-eveningness in human circadian rhythms. International Journal of Chronobiology, 4, 97-110. KOULACK, D. (1970) Effects of thirst on the sleep cycle. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 151, 143-145. KOULACK, D. (1991) To catch a dream: explorations of dreaming. Albany, N Y State Univer. of New York Press. KOULACK,D., LEBOW, M. D., & CHURCH,M. (1976) The effect of desensitization on the sleep and dreams of a phobic subject. Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science, 8, 418421. KOULACK,D., PREVOST,F., & DE KONINCK,J. (1985) Sleep, dreaming and adaptation to an ego-threatening intellectual activity. Sleep, 8, 244-253. MAVRIOGIANNIS, A,, & JACKSON, D. N . (1987) Empirical evaluation of the Survey of Work Styles: a profile measure of Type-A behavior. Pa er presented at a conference on Applications of Individual Differences in Stress ancf ~ e a l t hPsychology, Winnipeg, Manitoba, March. NESCA, M. (1989) T pe A-B differences in manifest dream content. (Unpublished honours thesis, Univer. o r ~ a n i t o b a ) NESCA,M., & KOULACK,D. (1991) Dream content and mood of Type A-B college students. Canadian Journal of Behauioural Science, 23, 788-793. WRIGHT, J . , & KOULACK,D. (1987) Dreams and contemporary stress: a dsruption-avoidance-adaptation model. Skep, 10, 172-179. Accepted March 16, 1992.
