Polya Tibor

Dr. Polya Tibor is an Associate Professor at Gáspár Károli Reformed University's Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Department of Intercultural Psychology and Social Psychology. He also serves as a Senior Research Fellow at the HUN-REN Natural Sciences Research Center, Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and Psychology. His academic career spans over two decades with significant contributions to social psychology and narrative analysis.

Dr. Polya completed his MA in Psychology at Eötvös Loránd University in 1996, followed by a PhD in Social Psychology from the University of Pécs in 2003 with a dissertation on "Social identity and the spatio-temporal perspective of life history." He achieved his habilitation at the University of Pécs in 2021, further solidifying his expertise in narrative psychology.

Dr. Polya's research focuses on the intersection of social psychology and narrative structures, examining how storytelling shapes identity, emotion, and social cognition. His work investigates how narrative perspective influences emotional regulation, how temporal structures in narratives reveal affective states, and how national identities are constructed through historical narratives. He has developed innovative methods for automated narrative analysis, applying computational approaches to psychological research questions. His research has significant implications for understanding collective victimhood, national identity formation, and the psychological mechanisms underlying narrative processing.

His extensive publication record demonstrates a consistent focus on narrative psychology, with recent work exploring the relationship between narrative structure and emotional intelligence, the psychological dimensions of national identity, and automated methods for narrative analysis. His research combines traditional psychological methods with computational approaches, creating bridges between social psychology and digital humanities.

• Bolyai Memorial Award from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (2009)

Dr. Polya has supervised doctoral students including Judith Gabriella Stengel (2024) on "Transgenerational transmission of national identity" and Attila Izso on "Empirical research into the semantic relationship of psychological meaning components identifiable in projective drawings using large language models (LLM)." He has served as opponent in numerous doctoral defenses across topics related to national identity, Machiavellian strategies, and legal cognition. His research is supported by multiple funding sources including OTKA projects K 124206 (as principal investigator on narrative construction as an indicator of emotional intelligence), K 81633, and K 109009, as well as COST-funded project IS1205 where he serves as working group leader.

Dr. Polya is actively involved in research teams focused on narrative psychology, including collaborations with international researchers across Europe. His work with the Narrative Categorical Content Analysis (NARRCAT) team has advanced methods for analyzing narrative structures in psychological research. He has organized academic conferences including "Elbeszélt érzelmek - filozófiai és pszichológiai perspektívák" (2013) and the Annual conference of the StoryNet (2014), fostering interdisciplinary dialogue on narrative and emotion.