The effects of psychological research on the continuity of the patient-physician relationship in a primary care health maintenance organization setting.

This project was designed to explore the impact of sensitive psychological research on the continuity of the relationship between the patient and the physician researcher in a primary care health maintenance organization setting. Subjects were 134 women who participated in a sensitive psychological research project that was conducted by a female family physician researcher. Subjects were matched by height and weight, length of the study interval, and type of medical service with 127 female controls who were seen by a male family physician during the same period in the same health maintenance facility.

Physiologic reaction of Type A's to objective and subjective challenge.

This study investigated the relationship between the Type A coronary-prone behavior pattern and the sympathetic nervous system arousal elicited during challenge. Type A and B (noncoronary-prone) subjects were randomly assigned to a task whose instructions indicated that the task was either Easy or Hard (Subjective) and which was in fact either Easy or Hard (Objective). Type B's became physiologically aroused only when they encountered a hard task that they were expecting to be hard.

Type A coronary-prone behavior pattern and social facilitation.

A laboratory study was conducted to investigate the task performance of Type A coronary-prone individuals relative to Type B's in three types of social situations: alone, with a similarly performing coactor, or with a better-performing coactor. The results indicate that Type A's performance on a simple task was facilitated by the presence of either a similar or superior coactor, whereas the presence of coactors impaired performance on a complex task. Type B's showed weak and nonsignificant facilitation effects that occurred only in the presence of similar coactors.