Jan Strelau

Who is Jan Strelau?

Jan Strelau is a Polish psychologist best known for his studies on temperament. He was professor of psychology at Warsaw University from 1968 to 2001 and is since 2001 professor at Warsaw School of Social Sciences and Humanities, where he takes the position of Vice-rector for Research.

Strelau’s research concentrates since several decades on temperament and its functional significance in human adaptation, especially under extreme conditions 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 to be measured since the 1970th by the Strelau Temperament Inventory and beginning from 1999 by the Pavlovian Temperament Survey – an inventory constructed by Strelau, Angleitner and Newberry. Both inventories have been adapted to over a dozen of language versions.