description Auke Tellegen Overview
Dutch-American personality psychologist at the University of Minnesota who developed the Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire (MPQ) and conducted landmark twin research on personality heritability.
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What is the Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire (MPQ)?
The MPQ is a self-report personality instrument developed by Auke Tellegen that measures personality along primary trait scales such as Well-Being, Achievement, Social Potency, and Constraint, which cluster into higher-order factors. It is widely used in personality and behavioral-genetics research.
What did Tellegen's twin studies find about the heritability of personality?
Tellegen's research with twins raised apart and together, including data from the Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart, found that a substantial portion of personality variation is attributable to genetic factors. These findings were influential in establishing that broad personality traits have a meaningful heritable component.
What are the higher-order factors in Tellegen's MPQ?
Tellegen's MPQ organizes its primary scales into higher-order dimensions, most notably Positive Emotionality, Negative Emotionality, and Constraint. This structure differs from but maps onto the more commonly used Big Five framework.
Where did Auke Tellegen spend his academic career?
Tellegen was a long-time faculty member in the Department of Psychology at the University of Minnesota, where he conducted much of his work on personality measurement and behavioral genetics. The MPQ was developed and refined during his decades there.
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