Historical Tales and National Identity

János László is head of the Social Psychology Department at the Institute of Psychology of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and a professor and chair in the Social Psychology Department at the University of Pécs, Hungary. He has published several books in Hungarian and English on social representations and narrative psychology, including The Science of Stories: An introduction into narrative psychology.

‘Historical Tales and National Identity is an important book exploring the nature of individual and collective identity. László is one of the most thoughtful social psychologists in the world. He draws on basic research in social, cognitive, and clinical psychology to uncover basic truths about the stories people tell about their countries, their history, and themselves. This is a book that will inform discussions among historians, anthropologists, linguists, political scientists, and especially psychologists.’ - James W. Pennebaker, University of Texas at Austin, USA‘Professor László provides an integrated and up-to-date account of the functions of narrative. Drawing comprehensively from cognitive, personality, interpretive, text analysis, and representational studies, Professor László analyses how narratives produce and are produced by identities. This book is an essential reference for scholars of narrative that brings together scientific and hermeneutical approaches in a readable way. He provides a lively recipe for creating an interdisciplinary science of stories.’- James H. Liu, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand

• PART 1 1. Brief summary of narrative psychology 2. Personal and social identity 3. National identity 4. Identity related psychological processes in historical narratives 5. Emotion regulation in historical narratives 6. Using automated content analytic techniques for identifying and quantifying identity-related narrative patterns in historical texts PART 2 7. Characteristics of the Hungarian national identity in intergroup agency, intergroup evaluation, intergroup emotions and cognitive processes 8. Emotional patterns in the Hungarian historical novels 9. Emotions in real intergroup conflicts: historical anchoring of inter-ethnic emotions 10. Elaboration of collective traumas 11. Cognitive and emotional elaboration of the trauma caused by the Trianon Peace Treaty in history textbooks 12. Intergroup evaluations as indicators of trauma elaboration in history textbooks 13. Elaboration of the Trianon Peace Treaty trauma in the Hungarian newspapers 14: Summary and forward look