Jan Strelau (born 30 May 1931 in

Gdańsk Gdańsk is a city on the Baltic Sea, Baltic coast of northern Poland, and the capital of the Pomeranian Voivodeship. With a population of 486,492, Data for territorial unit 2261000. it is Poland's sixth-largest city and principal seaport. Gdań ...

; died 4 August 2020 in

Warsaw Warsaw, officially the Capital City of Warsaw, is the capital and List of cities and towns in Poland, largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the Vistula, River Vistula in east-central Poland. Its population is officially estimated at ...

) was a

Polish Polish may refer to: * Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe * Polish language * Polish people, people from Poland or of Polish descent * Polish chicken * Polish brothers (Mark Polish and Michael Polish, born 1970), American twin ...

psychologist A psychologist is a professional who practices psychology and studies mental states, perceptual, cognitive, emotional, and social processes and behavior. Their work often involves the experimentation, observation, and explanation, interpretatio ...

best known for his studies on

temperament In psychology, temperament broadly refers to consistent individual differences in behavior that are biologically based and are relatively independent of learning, system of values and attitudes. Some researchers point to association of tempera ...

. He was professor of psychology at

Warsaw University The University of Warsaw (, ) is a public research university in Warsaw, Poland. Established on November 19, 1816, it is the largest institution of higher learning in the country, offering 37 different fields of study as well as 100 specializat ...

from 1968 to 2001 and was since 2001 professor at

Warsaw School of Social Sciences and Humanities SWPS University is a private non-profit university in Poland established in 1996 by three psychology professors, Andrzej Eliasz, Zbigniew Pietrasiński and Janusz Reykowski. SWPS University is one of the largest private universities in Pola ...

, where he took the positions of Vice-rector for Research and International Affairs (2002–2010), Vice-rector for Research (2010–2012), and the Chairman of the Board of Trustees (2012–2016).

Research

His research concentrated for several decades on

and its functional significance in human adaptation, especially under extreme conditions (stressors) and as a factor influencing behavior disorders. He transferred

Ivan Pavlov Ivan Petrovich Pavlov (, ; 27 February 1936) was a Russian and Soviet experimental neurologist and physiologist known for his discovery of classical conditioning through his experiments with dogs. Pavlov also conducted significant research on ...

’s concepts of higher

nervous system In biology, the nervous system is the complex system, highly complex part of an animal that coordinates its behavior, actions and sense, sensory information by transmitting action potential, signals to and from different parts of its body. Th ...

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 the

University of Bielefeld Bielefeld University () is a public university in Bielefeld, Germany. Founded in 1969, it is one of the country's newer universities, and considers itself a "reform" university, following a different style of organization and teaching than the e ...

, was the first researcher who introduced behavior genetic studies in

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It extends from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Sudetes and Carpathian Mountains in the south, bordered by Lithuania and Russia to the northeast, Belarus and Ukrai ...

, extended during the last decade by one of his disciples, Włodzimierz Oniszczenko, and by Wojciech Dragan to

molecular genetics Molecular genetics is a branch of biology that addresses how differences in the structures or expression of DNA molecules manifests as variation among organisms. Molecular genetics often applies an "investigative approach" to determine the st ...

centered on studying the genetic background of

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

. He has been first president of the European Association of Personality Psychology and president of the

International Society for the Study of Individual Differences International is an adjective (also used as a noun) meaning "between nations". International may also refer to: Music Albums * ''International'' (Kevin Michael album), 2011 * ''International'' (New Order album), 2002 * ''International'' (The T ...

. He was Vice-president of the International Union of Psychological Science. Strelau was born in the

Free City of Danzig The Free City of Danzig (; ) was a city-state under the protection and oversight of the League of Nations between 1920 and 1939, consisting of the Baltic Sea port of Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland) and nearly 200 other small localities in the surrou ...

, now

. He was a member of the

Polish Academy of Sciences The Polish Academy of Sciences (, PAN) is a Polish state-sponsored institution of higher learning. Headquartered in Warsaw, it is responsible for spearheading the development of science across the country by a society of distinguished scholars a ...

Academia Europaea The Academia Europaea is a pan-European Academy of humanities, letters, law, and sciences. The Academia was founded in 1988 as a functioning Europe-wide Academy that encompasses all fields of scholarly inquiry. It acts as co-ordinator of Europe ...

and foreign member of the

Finnish Academy of Sciences The Finnish Academy of Science and Letters (; ) is a Finnish learned society. It was founded in 1908 and is thus the second oldest academy in Finland. The oldest is the Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters, which was founded in 1838. Member ...

. He gained

honorary degree An honorary degree is an academic degree for which a university (or other degree-awarding institution) has waived all of the usual requirements. It is also known by the Latin phrases ''honoris causa'' ("for the sake of the honour") or '' ad hon ...

s (Dr.h.c.) of

University of Gdańsk The University of Gdańsk () is a public university, public research university located in Gdańsk, Poland. It is one of the top 10 universities in Poland and an important centre for the studies of the Kashubian language. History The Universi ...

University of Poznań A university () is an institution of tertiary education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase , which roughly means "community of teachers and scholars". Univ ...

and State University of Humanistic Sciences in Moscow. In 2000 he was awarded the

Prize of the Foundation for Polish Science The Prize of the Foundation for Polish Science () is the most prestigious scientific award in Poland given every year from 1992 by a non-governmental non-profit Polish organization, Foundation for Polish Science (). The prize is widely regarded a ...

(regarded as the “Polish Nobel Prize”). In 2011, he received the Commander's Cross of the

Order of Polonia Restituta The Order of Polonia Restituta (, ) is a Polish state decoration, state Order (decoration), order established 4 February 1921. It is conferred on both military and civilians as well as on alien (law), foreigners for outstanding achievements in ...

. He died in Warsaw, aged 89.

Writing

Strelau was the author of the Regulative Theory of Temperament (RTT) that concentrates on formal aspects of behavior, comprising energetic and temporal characteristics composed of such traits as: sensory sensitivity, emotional reactivity, endurance and activity (energetic aspect), briskness and perseverance (temporal combustion). The Formal Characteristics of Behavior – Temperament Inventory (FCB-TI), developed by Strelau and Bogdan Zawadzki and adapted to many language versions allows for measuring these traits. A lot of

empirical evidence Empirical evidence is evidence obtained through sense experience or experimental procedure. It is of central importance to the sciences and plays a role in various other fields, like epistemology and law. There is no general agreement on how the ...

has been collected by Strelau and his collaborators demonstrating that

heritability Heritability is a statistic used in the fields of Animal husbandry, breeding and genetics that estimates the degree of ''variation'' in a phenotypic trait in a population that is due to genetic variation between individuals in that population. T ...

explains about 40 percent of the variance in RTT

traits. In many studies, conducted among others on victims of disasters and catastrophes it came out that such traits as emotional reactivity, perseverance and activity are significant moderators of psychological consequences (e.g.

PTSD Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a mental disorder that develops from experiencing a traumatic event, such as sexual assault, domestic violence, child abuse, warfare and its associated traumas, natural disaster, traffic collision, ...

) of experienced

trauma Trauma most often refers to: *Psychological trauma, in psychology and psychiatric medicine, refers to severe mental and emotional injury caused by distressing events *Traumatic injury, sudden physical injury caused by an external force, which doe ...

. Jan Strelau published about 250 scientific articles in the field of

psychology Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Its subject matter includes the behavior of humans and nonhumans, both consciousness, conscious and Unconscious mind, unconscious phenomena, and mental processes such as thoughts, feel ...

individual differences Differential psychology studies the ways in which individuals differ in their behavior and the processes that underlie it. It is a discipline that develops classifications ( taxonomies) of psychological individual differences. This is distinguish ...

and was author or editor of 44 books.

Selected publications

* ''Temperament, personality, activity'' (1983) * ''Temperament: A psychological perspective'' (1998) * ''The Pavlovian Temperament Survey (PTS): An international handbook'' (1999) with A. Angleitner and B. H. Newberry * ''Temperament as a regulator of behavior: After fifty years of research'' (2008) * ''Temperamental bases of behavior: Warsaw studies on individual differences'' (1985) editor * ''The biological bases of personality and behavior: Theories, measurement techniques, and development'', vol. 1 (1985) editor, with F. H. Farley and A. Gale * ''The biological bases of personality and behavior: Psychophysiology, performance, and application'', vol. 2 (1986) editor, with F. H. Farley and A. Gale * ''Personality dimensions and arousal'' (1987) editor, with H. J. Eysenck * ''Explorations in temperament: International perspectives on theory and measurement'' (1991) editor, with A. Angleitner * ''People under extreme stress: An individual differences approach'' (2006) editor, with T. Klonowicz * ''Temperament as a regulator of behavior: After fifty years of research'' (2008) Clinton Corners, NY: Eliot Werner Publications.

References

External links

Warsaw School of Social Sciences and Humanities

Polska Akademia Nauk - Polish Academy of Sciences

Wydział Psychologii Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
{{DEFAULTSORT:Strelau, Jan Members of Academia Europaea People from the Free City of Danzig Psychologists from Gdańsk 1931 births 2020 deaths Academic staff of SWPS University 20th-century Polish psychologists 21st-century psychologists Academic staff of the University of Warsaw