Honoring the Scholarship of Auke Tellegen (1 CE)

Abstract

This session honors Auke Tellegen’s major contributions to the science of personality and psychopathology and the practice of assessment by self-report. Professor Tellegen made seminal contributions to understanding the structure of affect, personality and psychopathology, playing a crucial role in the “affective revolution” of the 1980s. He introduced a widely influential two-dimensional model that emphasized the distinctiveness of positive and negative affective states. and established that very similar structures could be identified in both short-term states and long-term personality traits. His work also clarified how basic dimensions of affect relate to important forms of psychopathology, with a particular focus on anxiety and depression. This groundbreaking work generated several major lines of research that continue to play a major role in psychological science today. In parallel to this basic scientific research, Professor Tellegen developed the Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire (MPQ), which was released for applied use shortly prior to his death. We describe the iterative program of research that produced the MPQ, the factor analytic approach used in its development, and some of the important constructs to emerge from this research. Professor Tellegen also played a key role in modernizing the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI). First, as a key member of the committee that developed the MMPI-2, and later as developer of the Restructured Clinical (RC) Scales and subsequently as co-developer of the MMPI-2-RF and MMPI-3. The session will conclude with a discussion of how Professor Tellegen’s scholarship has shaped the practice of personality and psychopathology assessment today, and for the foreseeable future.

Chair

Yossef Ben-Porath | Kent State University

Speakers

Lee Anna Clark | University of Iowa

Stephen Finn | Center for Therapeutic Assessment

Martin Sellbom | University of Otago

David Watson | University of Notre Dame

Goals & Objectives

1. Identify Tellegen’s contributions to and influence on the scientific study of mood, personality, and psychopathology.
2. Describe the development and evolution of the MPQ.
3. Describe Tellegen’s contributions to modernizing the MMPI.
4. Discuss Tellegen’s impact on the assessment of personality and psychopathology