Jan Strelau

Research

His research concentrated for several decades on temperament and its functional significance in human adaptation, especially under extreme conditions (stressors) and as a factor influencing behavior disorders. He transferred Ivan Pavlov’s concepts of higher nervous system properties such as strength of excitation, strength of inhibition and mobility of nervous processes into psychological constructs (traits) to be measured since the 1970s by the Strelau Temperament Inventory (STI) and beginning from 1999 by the Pavlovian Temperament Survey (PTS) – an inventory constructed by Strelau, Angleitner and Newberry. Both inventories have been adapted to over a dozen language versions.

Strelau, in cooperation with Alois Angleitner from Bielefeld University, was the first researcher who introduced behavior genetic studies in Poland, extended during the last decade by one of his disciples, Włodzimierz Oniszczenko, and by Wojciech Dragan to molecular genetics centered on studying the genetic background of temperament traits as defined by RTT.

Strelau was the founder and head of the Department of Psychology of Individual Differences and of the Interdisciplinary Center for Behavior-Genetic Research at Warsaw University. He has been first president of the European Association of Personality Psychology and president of the International Society for the Study of Individual Differences. He was Vice-president of the International Union of Psychological Science.

Strelau was born in the Free City of Danzig, now Gdańsk. He was a member of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Academia Europaea and foreign member of the Finnish Academy of Sciences. He gained honorary degrees (Dr.h.c.) of University of Gdańsk, University of Poznań and State University of Humanistic Sciences in Moscow. In 2000 he was awarded the Prize of the Foundation for Polish Science (regarded as the “Polish Nobel Prize”). In 2011, he received the Commander's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta.

He died in Warsaw, aged 89.