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.