Auke Tellegen was a professor of psychology at the University of Minnesota from 1968 to 1999. He worked on assessment, developing the Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire and contributed to the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory.
He received his PhD in personality psychology from the University of Minnesota in 1962 and did post-doctoral study in clinical psychology at the University of Minnesota Medical School.
Tellegen, alongside David Lykken, studied the effects that genetics had on a person's happiness.
Tellegen proposed the personality trait of Absorption. In 1974 he developed the Tellegen Absorption Scale (TAS) with Gilbert Atkinson, which he revised in 1982 and 1992.