Psychologists have once again confirmed by scientific means a fairly well-known idea: we are what we read. Well, or, in any case, we really want it to be so.
Admit it: wouldn’t you like to know what house the sorting hat would place you in at Hogwarts School of Wizardry? Now those who speak English have such an opportunity. On the site , created with the direct participation of JK Rowling and dedicated to the Harry Potter universe, there is a distribution system for faculties. By registering and answering a dozen fun questions, you get your appointment.
It is not known what magical laws the authors of this entrance test were guided by, but a group of American psychologists decided to believe magic as a science. Researchers asked 132 Harry Potter fans who had already been housed in a house to answer a series of personality tests.1. The result was quite curious. The “students” of most faculties did respond to the psychological stereotypes associated with them. So, Slytherin, distributed to the “faculty of cunning and villains”, demonstrated significantly higher indicators of the qualities of the so-called “dark triad of personality” (narcissism-Machiavellianism-psychopathy). Those who entered the faculty of “hungry for wisdom” Ravenclaw were indeed distinguished by higher cognitive abilities and a craving for knowledge. And those enrolled in the most inconspicuous and “unheroic” Hufflepuff showed an increased tendency to compromise and the desire to be nice to everyone around.
Read more:
- Why do we read?
The only exception, oddly enough, was, in fact, Gryffindor, where Harry himself and his friends studied. The participants of the experiment distributed there were not at all extroverts and brave men. Apparently, in this place the magic of the creators of the site gave some failure. But the researchers found a way to refine the results. They asked the participants about which faculty they would really like to study in, regardless of where they were assigned. And this time, the coincidence of personal characteristics with the psychological portraits of typical representatives of the faculties turned out to be almost one hundred percent.
It must be said that this is far from the first time serious scholars have turned to the Harry Potter series. So, quite recently, another group of psychologists published the results of an equally interesting study2. They discovered the remarkable pedagogical effect of Rowling’s novels. Children who were read fragments of books describing Harry’s friendship with “stigmatized characters” (for example, with half-blood wizards born in “Muggle” families) subsequently showed much greater tolerance towards such groups in real life – the unemployed, homosexuals, etc. Further.
However, the current research has more to do not with pedagogy, but with the hidden traits of our character. “Our findings indicate that the preferred fiction and its characters reflect deep personality traits that we ourselves are not always aware of,” the authors of the work write.
PS By the way, if you suddenly wonder, the modest author of these lines was enrolled in the Ravenclaw faculty. Which is quite satisfied due to the increased craving for scientific knowledge.
1. Laura C. Crysel et. al. «Harry Potter and the measures of personality: Extraverted Gryffindors, agreeable Hufflepuffs, clever Ravenclaws, and manipulative Slytherins». Personality and Individual Differences, Volume 83, September 2015.
2. Loris Vezzali et. al. “The greatest magic of Harry Potter: Reducing prejudice.” Journal of Applied Social Psychology, online publication dated July 23, 2014.