Statistical discrimination of male myocardial infarction patients and healthy males by means of a psychological test and a tracing of basic dimensions of the infarction personality

434 male MI patients and 731 ‘healthy’ controls filled out the retrospective RSL psychological questionnaire. This test has shown to discriminate significantly between a considerable number of clinical statements describing MI patients, and a healthy population. A principal factor analysis (with Varimax rotation) on 27 discriminating items from a multivariate discriminant function produced four factors: Depressiveness, hostility, work involvement, and job responsibility. The dimensions of work involvement, and job responsibility are well known from other studies on psychological characteristics of the assumed MI personality. The dimensions of depressiveness and hostility, however, may constitute important new contributions.