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Born in Zalaegerszeg in 1946, Ferenc Erős grew up in Budapest. His parents worked in low classified jobs in the book industry, at various publishing companies, and at the National Insurance Company. Erős studied psychology at Eötvös University, Budapest, where he obtained a degree in 1969. He joined the Institute of Psychology of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (HAS) in 1973. He became the head of the Department of Social Psychology and the leader of the working group wearing the same name in 1984. From 2001 to 2009 he was the deputy chair of the Institute, and since 2002 he has been a professional consultant. He defended his academic candidate’s dissertation in 1982. He habilitated at Eötvös University in 1996, becoming a doctor of HAS in 2002. He was awarded with the Knight of Cross from the Order of Merit of the Hungarian Republic in 2006, and with the award For Budapest in 2008. Besides doing research, he has been teaching since the 1970s. He was a visiting lecturer at Eötvös University and Wesley János Pastoral Training College and, between 1992 and 1996, an assistant professor and chair (1994-1996) at the Department of Psychology of the University of Szeged. Since 1998, he has been a professor at the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Pécs and the head of the program of theoretical psychoanalysis at the Doctoral School of Psychology there.
Erős’s main research areas include the social psychology of prejudice, identity and social discrimination and theoretical and historical issues of psychoanalytic social psychology. He is a member of the editorial board of various journals and the author of several books and studies.
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