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
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 ...
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
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 ...
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
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 ...
. 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
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 ...
. 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
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 ...
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 ...
of
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 HumanitiesPolska Akademia Nauk - Polish Academy of SciencesWydział 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