Abstract
The paper surveys the last 30 years of Hungarian academic psychology. Around 1989–1990, the time of the great social changes Hungarian psychology was rather Westernized, but still a relatively small scientific field and applied profession.The opening and liberalization of politics made psychology in Hungary a booming profession and a rich research field. Education of psychologists was spreading, and becoming more Westernized in textbook usage and reading materials. Entrance numbers at two universities with 80 students were replaced by 2010 by 6 university programs and about 8000incoming students. The training system is a Bologna typeBA + MA + PhD system, The educational booming has its own problems. As all university subjects, psychology training is also underfinanced, with high teaching loads and a move by university management towards applied areas, neglecting basic research. The research activity is characterized by a fivefold increase of English language publications coming from Hungary over a 20 years period. University research was strengthened, and competitive grant systems were introduced, with good success aretes by psychologists. Here again, managerial thinking questions many aspects of basic research and liberalized science management. These factors are peculiar to psychology, but they do have animpact on it.
The paper gives some details about one chapter of academic psychology, cognitive psychology.J Hist Behav Sci. 2022;1–14.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/jhbs|1This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.© 2022 The Authors.Journal of The History of the Behavioral Sciences published by Wiley Periodicals LLC.