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

[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