It Seems Sometimes a Surface Reading is Sufficient

[annoni-no.livejournal.com]

A recent paper published in Journal of Applied Social Psychology found that reader identification with with the main character of Harry Potter (and disidentification with Voldemort) positively correlated with reduced bias toward stigmatized minorities in real life.  Researchers found this Harry Potter effect was significant even after controlling for the general amount of books read, which by itself is strongly associated with reduced bigotry and prejudice.  So, it seems unfair to say the books are nothing but toxic.

What I want to know is the correlation between reading Harry Potter and how people think their ENEMIES should be treated.  And what criteria determine what makes someone "bad" and how badly they deserve to be punished.

http://www.psmag.com/navigation/books-and-culture/harry-potter-battle-bigotry-87002/

*Update

The linked article is correct in its general summation of the findings, but is sloppily written.  I'm not entirely comfortable reproducing the entire paper, but if there are particular sections people would like to see I'll try to either excerpt or summarize them more accurately.  The paper itself is hardly groundbreaking - it's been shown before that reading about foreign perspectives helps increase tolerance.  This mostly showed that the same effect extended to fantasy fiction.  The studies were also extremely narrow in focus (only looking at identification with Harry or Voldemort).  Mostly I thought people would be relieved that SOME good came from such a widely selling series, despite its numerous flaws.

Comments

[forsnape.livejournal.com]

In addition, Harry and his friends interact with various sub-human species such as elves and goblins, ...Harry “tries to understand them and appreciate their difficulties,”

-not when Harry cast the unforgivable curse on an innocent old goblin in book7

I think a very interesting part of the book is that its characters often say something wise but at the same time act the other way. A typical example is Sirius' 'the world isn't split into good people and Death Eaters...' quote and his attitude towards Snape.

Ah,how I love the hypocrisy in this book!

[oneandthetruth.livejournal.com]

Don't forget that the researchers refer to elves and goblins as "sub-human," not "non-human." So they bought the bigotry in the series that says those sapient beings, with their own language and culture, are inferior to humans. But hey, elves and goblins aren't real, so it's not as if that prejudice would extend to real life, right?

[annoni-no.livejournal.com]

The only people who used, and allowed the use of, the term "sub-humans" were the writers and editors at Pacific Standard. The closest the original researchers came was this passage providing context for the novels:

The world of Harry Potter is characterized by strict social hierarchies and resulting prejudices, with obvious parallels with our society. First of all, people without magic powers are profoundly discriminated [against] in the “wizarding world.” Another stigmatized category is that of “half-blood” or “mud-blood,” wizards and witches born from families where only one parent has magical abilities. Other examples of stigmatized categories are the elves (servants and slaves of wizards), the half-giants (born from one giant parent and an “ordinary” wizard or witch), the goblins (who guard the bank of wizards). These latter categories represent creatures that are not “fully” human; They are however represented by Rowling as humanized, and can thus be easily perceived as low-status human categories. Harry has meaningful contact with characters belonging to stigmatized groups. He tries to understand them and appreciate their difficulties, some of which stem from intergroup discrimination, and fights for a world free of social inequalities.

The researchers themselves explicitly drew parallels between the mythological species and marginalized human groups. Whether this comparison was also made by a general reading audience was the primary question the studies sought to answer. The data they obtained support the hypothesis that people do tend to make that generalization, within certain parameters.

There are a number of criticisms one can make of the study, but hypocrisy isn't one of them.

[oneandthetruth.livejournal.com]

Oh, okay. Thank you. I wasn't aware of that.

[oneandthetruth.livejournal.com]

So I guess the mistake Snape made is that of being a cis-gendered heterosexual male. That and being the author's boggart. No doubt if he'd been gay, like Scummywhore, this person would have made excuses for him, too. For example, you can't blame a person for being bitter, twisted, and hateful (Snape), or sneaky, backstabbing, and manipulative (Scummy), when they've had to hide and be ashamed of who they really are their whole lives. That kind of oppression can twist one's character, and sometimes one just can't stand the pain, so one lashes out, even against innocent children. How's that for a Snapish rationalization?

Everybody has their blind spots, and it seems that Snape is this person's, for whatever reason. It's been famously and accurately said that American conservative politicians are against gay rights and gay marriage--until they find out their kid is gay. Then they learn to empathize. If this person had an attachment to someone like Snape, they'd learn to empathize with him, too.

We all like to think that if we like someone and agree with them on certain things, we'll agree with them on everything. Unfortunately, that's rarely the case. A person can be very sensitive on certain subjects, and a callous jerk on others. And people who love passionately hate passionately as well. I'm like that myself, as you may have noticed. ; )

[vermouth1991.livejournal.com]

I've decided that my words had been a bit too harsh even though I mentioned no real names (or real usernames), therefore I shall be deleting my original post and reposting it here, sorry for the inconvenience. :(

(@oneandthetruth's reply still applies, though)

(This comment is deliberately vague due to my conflicted emotions; no real names or direct quotes are being used, but I hereunto swear to God that they all really happened)

~*~

I've been following a certain person's LJ and tumblr accounts, in many aspects I admire hir words of bravery and passion and hir no-nonsense attitude, but a lot of times I also cringe at hir judgemental attitudes and words of finality (e.g. Mark Gatiss once made a comment: "i think that a lot of bisexual people actually might not be so." and (s)he replied after reblogging, to the effect of: "I don't care if you're gay yourself, go f*&k yourself, Mark Gatiss!" And the tumblr tags were "sexism" and "go jump off a cliff, moffat" and "bigotry" and the like); but I kept on reading, pathetic masochist that I am, and then came the worst "betrayal": a web comic was reblogged, where it went through all the "shitty things" Snape did in his life, ending with ASP asking Harry why the heck did he get named after such a bastard (Just the Severus part, not the Albus part, notice that this web comic made no mention of Dumbledore, who did much more damage than Snape ever could to Harry and other students) , the reblog/comments were full of stuff like "just think, Snape is Neville's Boggart when even Bellatrix isn't!". What our Jane/John Doe here added to hir reblog as a comment, however, was a very calm "This. All of this." (It is webspeak for "i agree", right?)

I'm not gonna lie, at that moment I burst into tears. This from the person who stood up against injustices towards the LGBT community and wrote all those wonderful critical reviews of badly-written YA literature?! How on earth can you be so blind, [username]? AAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGHH. *sob*

The offending post: http://harrypottersdeadmum.tumblr.com/post/64270180182/no-i-will-never-get-over-harry-naming-his-child

[oryx_leucoryx]

They didn't ask about identification with other characters, only Harry (among young readers) and Harry vs Voldemort for older readers. I wonder about the attitudes of readers who identify with other characters. Especially Severus and Draco, each with their own fandoms for assorted reasons.

[oneandthetruth.livejournal.com]

Good points. I'd like to know that as well.

[annoni-no.livejournal.com]

They asked about Harry vs Voldemort for all age groups. No age group was asked about identification with any character besides those two. The one consistent finding across all age groups was that there was no correlation between identifying with one and NOT identifying with the other (e.g. there were always a number of people who identified equally with Harry and Voldemort.

I'd agree that the narrowness of their study is one of its weaknesses, though it does support prior research and points toward potentially fruitful ways to reduce bigotry going forward.

[nx74defiant.livejournal.com]

For six weeks, they met weekly with a researcher in groups of five or six to discuss selected passages from the Harry Potter books. Half of the kids read, and talked about, sections that dealt directly with prejudice; the others focused on sections that discussed unrelated topics.

I'd be interested in knowing what sections that dealt with prejudice the researcher picked. The ones that put Harry in a positive light? Did they touch on the anything that would show Harry in a negative light? Did the researcher get involve with the discussions?

A final study used a different age group (college students) in a different country (England) and assessed attitudes toward a different minority group (refugees). The results were also a bit different, as identification with Harry was not linked with lower levels of prejudice. (The researchers point out that Harry is less likely to be an effective role model to this older audience.)

Perhaps the college students saw past the superficial reading and realized the negative side of Harry. So who was an effective role model to the older audience - hmmmm.

[annoni-no.livejournal.com]

The only participants that were involved in discussions were the fifth graders from the first study, which were lead by the researchers. The paper didn't specify which passages were chosen.

[maidofkent.livejournal.com]

The only participants that were involved in discussions were the fifth graders from the first study, which were lead by the researchers.

It would be interesting to know how much the discussions helped the children in changing their viewpoints, as opposed to simply reading the passages. I don't think that's negating the study, because it shows that the books can lead into helpful discussions with an adult, and make it easier to present non-bigoted points of view. As you say, it is good to see a positive outcome from reading HP. It is also a positive that while the books overtly deal with a racial-type prejudice, tolerance towards a minority group not overtly discussed in the books (homosexuals) also increased.

It does however sound a narrow study. Just reading selected passages wouldn't deal with a main problem of the books, which is that while bigotry is clearly presented as a Bad Thing, the over-riding impression given is that bigotry is the property of certain individuals and groups.

[wolf-willow31.livejournal.com]

"The only participants that were involved in discussions ... were lead by the researchers."

If you "lead" the discussions you will get the answer that you want, even if you think that you're being neutral. Your subconscious attitudes show through to and influence the participant. That's why they go to the expense of using double-blind techniques in everything from medical research to police line-ups.

The results of this study are meaningless.

[annoni-no.livejournal.com]

Not necessarily. It depends on whether the factor in question can actually be influenced by what the researcher is doing. In the discussion section the authors cited another study, done with children slightly younger than their group, that found *no* significant difference in reduction of prejudice between children who had a story discussed with them and those who only read the story without further comment or input from the researchers. It seems to be the role playing inherent in reading from a foreign perspective that reduces prejudice, not being lectured about it.

Which makes sense. Humans are emotional creatures, and we are not remotely as logical as we like to believe. We do, however, empathize strongly with our fellow man, as long as we recognize them as essentially 'like us.' Stories allow us to highlight that underlying shared humanity in a way that reaches our emotional core. This explains why we see so many conservative politicians do a 180 on gay rights once it's their own family that comes out of the closet, when all the cold, logical arguments about equal rights and fairness under the law failed to sway them.

The researchers also made clear that this was an area that needed more research to clarify cause and effect. So, this study isn't definitive by any means, but it's not utterly meaningless either. If nothing else, transcripts of the discussion will show how the kids interpreted what they read, which is useful information in and of itself (though not published in the journal article in question).

[wolf-willow31.livejournal.com]

That's interesting, but I remain extremely skeptical. If it was not necessary to "lead" the participants in a discussion, then why did they do it? Why not have the children read the passages themselves, alone, and then fill out a questionnaire?

And it is now common practice for scientific journals to make additional "supporting material" available on their website, so there is no reason (such as high publishing costs) for any transcripts, etc. to be withheld. The authors should also have specified which passages from the books were used.

As someone who occasionally publishes scientific papers in peer-reviewed journals, I feel that the reviewers and the journal editor should have insisted on the additional info. Without it, I continue to doubt the validity of their results. It is a very weak study, at best.

[annoni-no.livejournal.com]

The authors don't make any extravagant claims about what they've done: they make explicit that they haven't identified the mechanism by which exposure to oppressed fantasy characters translates into greater sympathy toward real-life marginalized groups. They further concede that studies 2 and 3 only connected correlational data and study 1 didn't have a mechanism to distinguish between the effects of purely reading the passage and having a structured discussion about it. Further studies to examine these oversights are suggested.

The authors do point out that their results are still important. Regardless of whether it was solely reading the passage or participating in a structured discussion about it, Harry Potter did work as a medium to reduce prejudice against marginalized groups in the real world even though it was based in fantasy. The correlational data supports this reading, as does the fact that prior studies have shown merely reading from oppressed groups perspectives, without further discussion, works to reduce prejudice. Given that far more people read fantasy than carefully structured passages tailored to reduce prejudice (and many have read Harry Potter) this is good news. It also suggests ways teachers can promote tolerance among their students in ways that effective and fun.

[wolf-willow31.livejournal.com]

"Effective and fun?" Yes, I'm probably missing the point by fretting about the study's design and methodology. It must be my grad student days coming back to me. The journal is a respected, peer-reviewed publication and I should just get over it.

The main point really is that it is encouraging that kids seem be taking positive messages from HP, rather than negative ones (I wouldn't want to think that they're all going to turn into mini-Marauders, after all). And if this study encourages teachers and parents to discuss reading with kids, that's even better.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this!