More People Need(ed) to Read Harry Potter

[annoni-no.livejournal.com]

I know, a provocative title in this community, but we have concrete evidence that reading Harry Potter leads to a small, but significant, increase in antipathy toward Donald Trump and his policies.

https://www.asc.upenn.edu/news-events/news/new-study-shows-reading-harry-potter-lowers-americans%E2%80%99-opinions-donald-trump ; (Link through to the actual study in article.)

A while back I posted about a study that found that identifying with Harry Potter led to decreased bias toward stigmatized minorities.  At the time, I wondered how reading the series led people to feel about how to deal with their enemies given the vindictiveness the series shows in a close reading.  As it turns out, the more Harry Potter books someone has read, even controlling for "party identification, gender, education level, age, evangelical self-identification, and social dominance orientation," the more opposed they were to violence and punitive policies (like torturing their enemies as advocated by Trump) and authoritarianism.  This is in addition to confirmation of the decreased bias against outgroups.

You don't have to like Harry Potter, and I completely agree that the books have a lot of problems.  But let's not loose sight of the fact that the world is entering a dangerous, if not outright fascistic period.  There's too much hatred and divisiveness driving our politics; hate crimes have risen by several hundred percent since Trump's election.  If reading Harry Potter does help lead people to greater tolerance and mercy, we shouldn't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

Comments

[jana-ch.livejournal.com]

Bear in mind that correlation is not causation. Maybe people with less bias against stigmatized minorities are more likely to read Harry Potter—or more likely to read fantasy in general, or maybe just more likely to read, period—than those with more bias against stigmatized minorities. I’m wondering how the study was constructed, and what variables they used as stand-in characteristics for ‘bias against stigmatized minorities’, and how they went about measuring those variables.

I didn’t take the infamous Geography 426 (Social Statistics) back in grad school for nothing. My headcanon of how Snape’s NEWT students behave is based on what that class was like. It doesn’t just take over your life; it becomes your life.

[annoni-no.livejournal.com]

They have a link to the original study embedded in the article I linked to. Harry Potter, whatever you think of its merits, was and is a cultural phenomenon unlike any other piece of literary fiction in recent memory. The study found, among other things, that there were no significant differences in the percentage of people who'd read the books when they sorted by party affiliation (which frequently is found to correlate with the traits studied). The paper itself includes a very lengthy discussion of possible confounding effects and the difficulties with teasing out correlation vs causation - and a lengthy discussion about how they attempted to control for each factor. I felt it rude to quote so much of the paper at length when the original study is a mere 2 clicks away and a more extnsive summary only 1.

If you think this is too troublesome I can edit to include more of the study here, but at only 27 pages, including appendices and sources, I don't think this is a terribly onerous read.

[kahran042]

I can't speak for anyone else, but there's no way I'm reading a survey that vilifies people for not liking Harry Potter.

[seductivedark.livejournal.com]

Not everyone is of the same political persuasion here.

[madderbrad.livejournal.com]

Hard to talk about this without risking acrimony, but since the OP and reference article both seem to state as fact that the democratically elected president of the United States is EVIL I don't think my little comment is going beyond those bounds ...

we have concrete evidence that reading Harry Potter leads to a small, but significant, increase in antipathy toward Donald Trump and his policies.

... but a sharp decrease in cognitive abilities, literary analysis and mental independence of thought. :-)

Well, maybe not the people in this community. But we here would probably would spend so much effort resisting, deriding and mocking the poor writing and so forth there'd be nothing left over that permits a questionable indoctrination against Trump.

Part of me rebels at even allowing the notion that Rowling's largely thought-free broad-brush-strokes simplistic plots might somehow be so *clever* and *powerful* enough to sway people's thinking. Ugh. Real life and politics is way beyond the Potter author's manipulative abilities in my opinion. There's a reason she targeted ignorant manipulable kids. And that her near sole means of preaching her "anti-Brexit and anti-Trump political views" is restrained to 140-character sound bites on Twitter.

Asking the people to endorse reading HP to produce a 'small' change in political view is like asking them all to voluntarily dumb-down to do so. What does that say about Trump's opponent? :-)

If I were to read ten thousand pages of work about fluffy pink bunnies - illustrated, even! - I'd probably end up quite mellow and even more disposed against the gun lobby. But I think I'd suffer ten times fold in other areas of critical thought and the amount of time I'd wasted when I could have been reading mature adult material and effecting real change in the world. Is the secret to defying Trump really to regress into childhood and hide in fantasy land?

Finally, how long would it take for the fluffy bunny image to decay and my mind return to normal?

As to the article, some broad brush strokes there -

Harry and his friends advocate for oppressed house-elves -

ONE friend, who was mocked for doing so, with her advocation going nowhere. At the end of the series house-elves are still enslaved!!!. OMG!!

The Harry Potter series promotes non-violent means of conflict resolution

The Potter series is a sequence of pitched battles between two sides wielding the magical equivalent of guns! Are we supposed to take to the streets and fight pitched battles because of an amorphous fear that the properly elected president of the United States says nasty things?

The Harry Potter protagonists work against authoritarian characters in the books.

The Harry Potter protagonists fight against armed terrorists and insurrectionists who take over the legal government by force!

As to the 'study' itself -

Gierzynski (2013) argues that Potter fans are more tolerant than non-fans ...

I'd say they're a trifle dumber too. :-) Where 'fan' in this case is defined as 'someone who *liked* the books'.

Seriously, I can see a match between those who just sit down and absorb Rowling's simplistic story with no critique or understanding of its flaws and those who similarly passively accept the left-wing indoctrination that I gather prevails in Western universities. I think that's the key. Reading Harry Potter doesn't make one more accepting of the left (and hence against Trump); rather, those of the left are more at home in reading and accepting Harry Potter, pleasant material of little substance and riddled with practical, real-world errors.

Just my opinion.

[annoni-no.livejournal.com]

You mean the "democratically" elected president who lost the popular voter by over 2 million people and counting? Who only won because of an archaic electoral institution specifically designed solely to ensure the continued political dominance of the American nobility-in-all-but-name? Which those founders who designed the electoral college spelled out explicitly was the purpose of the institution?

For someone who goes on about the lack of critical thinking skills of others you are breathtakingly ignorant yourself. I'd suggest removing the log from your own eye before complaining about about dust specks in other people's.

Which is not to mention the incredible elitism and arrogance necessary to say that YOUR reading of a text is the only correct and "logical" one. Everyone has unique experiences and perspectives, and different aspects of a text resonate more strongly with some people than others. Even if there are problematic elements when you pick apart the text with a microscope, those surface readings do, in fact, have textual evidence supporting them in the broad strokes. (And let's be frank, Harry running after Lucius Malfoy, for example, to trick him into freeing the house elf who had nearly killed Harry several times that year is a lot more memorable than Harry not jumping into SPEW with both feet when the elves themselves are saying they're happy and are insulted by Hermione's actions.)

Perhaps we should both be generous and instead of insulting people's stupidity, ignorance, and reasoning abilities, we say that no one has enough time to study everything in depth and sometimes can only skim the surface while maintaining a healthy life. Some people skimp on over-analyzing children's literature. Others can't be bothered to know the basics about the election of the single most powerful individual in the world's only superpower who will have easy access to nuclear weapons. No one's perfect.

[madderbrad.livejournal.com]

You mean the "democratically" elected president who lost the popular vote?

Yes.

Who only won because of an archaic electoral institution specifically designed solely to ensure the continued political dominance of the American nobility-in-all-but-name?

That's bull. The US electoral college is very (very very) roughly similar to my own Australia's system of electoral representation. We map out the boundaries of our seats to give each region roughly the same number of electors. The USA starts off with its sacrosanct states and so alters the number of college votes to suit. Weird how the USA requires human 'electors', though ... maybe if you didn't you wouldn't have the spoilt whingers-after-the-fact that we're seeing. Here in Australia we have often had governments voted in who didn't win the popular vote. And we're two centuries less 'archiac' than the USA.

Everyone has unique experiences and perspectives ... those surface readings do, in fact, have textual evidence supporting them in the broad strokes.

No. Of course, a lot of literary analysis has some element of subjectivity, which then invalidates any claim as to 'absolute' merit. But there's no 'rule' in literature which states that such *always* applies, and I'm quite tired of those in the HP fandom who run away shrieking 'Subjectivity! Individual perspectives! Context!' and pout that it's too hard to look at the canon objectively, so just don't try, okthankxbye. They're just intellectual cowards. Claiming that 'broad brush strokes' suffice for any proper assessment is just lazy. The laziness required to absorb a lot of the left's identity politics doctrine. :-) And not worry about an election until it doesn't go 'the way it was supposed to go'.

And let's be frank, Harry running after Lucius Malfoy ... is a lot more memorable than Harry not jumping into SPEW with both feet ...

And let's be frank, Harry's impulse saving of Dobby requires much less mental effort and thinking than carrying his weight in SPEW. Sort of like an SJW sending a quick tweet before coffee versus an activist getting down and dirty and, like, studying the issues in detail.

Also, Harry's save of Dobby is memorable, yes, but also for the fact that only ONE of the innumerable poor enslaved house-elves were thus saved. A lot of house-elves were happy, sure. A lot were treated badly. If you want to claim - before you sip your coffee - that Dobby was the only one, no further effort needed, then I think you run the risk of ignoring a lot of poor souls that you otherwise could have helped.

Finally, no matter how wonderful you think Harry's impromptu saving of a single house elf, no matter how 'memorable', the paper is still incorrect in saying that "Harry and his friends advocate for oppressed house-elves". Tcch, these pesky details!! Sorry, house-elves.

Perhaps we should ... say that no one has enough time to study everything in depth and sometimes can only skim the surface while maintaining a healthy life.

No. Never. That way is the intellectual laziness and arrogance of the left; those who slam any opposing view as verboten rather than actually bother to *study* the argument and rebut. Those who are now surprised at the outcome of the election. Who have only now discovered what an 'electoral college' is. Who are realising they could have done much more to foil Trump. Who wish they didn't just 'skim the surface' ... a quick look at facebook, their twitter feeds, cool, everyone I know is thinking just like me ... before.

The American election was a triumph in disclosing what lay beneath the surface.

What you've said reflects what I said before; I think those whose attitude to Harry Potter are like that which you advocate - skim the surface, have a cappuccino - are also the ones most likely to sit, absorb and parrot back the left-wing doctrine at universities. No hard mental effort required, annoni_no says you don't need to study the material in any detail, just take note of those broad brush strokes before the exam.

And thus Rowling makes a billion. And Trump wins an election.

[zigadenus.livejournal.com]

The link is broken -- it looks like the article has been pulled. So, needless to say, I can't check their methods, but my first question is: did they control for the number of other books that their participants had read? Perhaps the people who have read more Harry Potter books have just read more books in general -- in that case, this study is effectively polling people who like reading.

Clarifying, I'm not taking a stance one way or another here, just examining the study methodology. (Scientist, can't help myself; it's a condition.)

[madderbrad.livejournal.com]

The link isn't broken; it's just old.

It takes you to an index page of articles. Search for 'Potter' in the search field at the top and you'll find a link to a precis of the paper. A link to the actual study is embedded within that.

[kahran042]

annoni_no is obviously a Rowlingbot, and therefore lacks the intelligence to understand science.

[zigadenus.livejournal.com]

[I tried posting this earlier, but it tagged it as spam on account of hyperlinks. Links are still here, because looking at the source is always good in this kind of exercise, but you'll have to remove '$' I added.]

Mmmkay. Study pdf is here, in case anyone else wants it (www$cambridge$org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/84B3BED39ACA703DC7B8BE2D5486B185/S1049096516001633a.pdf/harry-potter-and-the-deathly-donald.pdf)

I read over their methods, and looked at how they constructed their analytical model. --Again, no ideological stance on this (I haven't even read the preamble and arguments, I'm just looking at research methodology, approaching this from a science/good data/good study design perspective.). Pertinent bits are:

total of 1,142 respondents completed both waves of the survey relevant to this study. To measure the two independent variables, a survey administered in 2014 asked all respondents about their extent of exposure to the Harry Potter story through either books or movies (see online appendix). Each person’s scores were summed.

Okay, 1) good sample size. Check. 2) online appendix comprises the survey questions, so we can see what the author actually asked. Awesome. So let's take a look:

(static$cambridge$org/resource/id/urn:cambridge.org:id:binary:20161118060719324-0118:S1049096516001633:S1049096516001633sup001.pdf)

3) Now we get into the problematic areas. My expressed suspicions are justified: the author asks only about Harry Potter -- Methodologically there are two arguments to be made here: A,the author is only interested in the specific effects of Harry Potter vs B, total exposure to reading (anything, even Harry Potter) may be driving the trend that the author reports. To untangle what's really going on here, this study needs more data. If the trend is real (i.e., if reading Harry Potter does make you more empathetic or whatever), the study needs to explicitly include people who read a lot, but didn't read much Harry Potter. Otherwise, this is simply a correlation with some other explanatory variable (maybe "total reading", maybe something else entirely -- we don't know, and we can't know, given how this data was collected).

But ok, let's go on to the control variables the author accounted for:

I include control variables in all models in order to take into account potentially spurious causes of both Trump support and exposure to Harry Potter. All models included gender (females were expected to rate Trump poorly), education (expected to negatively predict Trump support), age (expected to positively predict Trump support), and evangelical self-identification (expected to discourage both tolerance of Muslims and gays, and consuming stories about wizards). Two dummy variables accounted for party identification, and ideology was measured on the usual seven-point scale.

4) Ok, methodologically, these are all good controls. Pass. But it still doesn't address whether it's exposure to reading anything at all, or exposure to reading Harry Potter specifically. The 'education' variable gets closest, but is only a proxy -- there is no way of determining (among the data collected by this study)how much leisure reading any of the participants did, regardless of whether they are highly educated or not. And no, you can't make the argument that 'more educated people read more in general'. Maybe they do. But you don't know if that is true of the people in this particular study, because it wasn't addressed in how the data was collected.

So in summary: this study was structured badly, and it is technically impossible, given the type of data collected, to determine whether it is reading Harry Potter, specifically, that drives any of these trends. Maybe reading Pride and Prejudice would do the same thing. Point is, we can't tell from these data.

[sweettalkeress.livejournal.com]

That was my first thought as well. Especially since, in my own personal experience, people who find "deep messages" in what they read tend to have read those things for affirmation, rather than for instruction. My first thought is that what's going on here is that there is some variable that influences both love of Harry Potter and antipathy toward Donald Trump and/or racism more generally, that couldn't be measured in the study. I would be very, very surprised to learn that one book, or even one series, was enough to influence people's opinions on racism in any really major way at all.

[annoni-no.livejournal.com]

The difference between Harry Potter and all other books is that Harry Potter was a cultural phenomenon unlike any seen in recent memory. While I do wish they had specifically asked about other reading, they didn't give us the nothing you suggest. There was *no statistical difference* in the number of people who read Harry Potter when sorted by political affiliation, even though Republicans are less likely to read books than Democrats.

A lot of people who aren't normally readers read Harry Potter. We've known that for years. Even with a representative sample, it's possible that they somehow reached only Republicans who read more than the average or Democrats who read less, but it's unlikely.

The worst you can say about this study is that it only confirms what other studies have told us: reading, especially fiction, promotes tolerance. I thought it particularly relevant because a number of members of this community had expressed concern about the vindictiveness and cruelty in the Potter books, as well as other social justice concerns Potter handled badly, and this study showed that the correlation ran the opposite way from what people were concerned about.

[kahran042]

You probably want anyone who has the audacity to not worship Harry Potter deported or executed.

[jana-ch.livejournal.com]

Worship the Harry Potter books? Take a look at our icon. This is Death To Capslock. We shred the Harry Potter books, for the sheer joy of shredding them. When the deportation list is drawn up of those who fail to worship at the shrine of Rowling, most of us will be on it.

[fdsfd (from livejournal.com)]

Hmmm... is this paper really good science? Wouldn't the researcher's hypothesis here include the authors own preconceptions of the book - that its a book about harmony, tolerance, justice mercy, etc, which may not be true? "A book I think is about justice and democracy makes people believe more in justice and democracy" regardless of whether the book actually sends those messages. Garbage in, garbage out, wouldn't that be the argument???

My more cynical view is that any research that includes the words "Harry Potter" is more likely to be featured on a clickbait website and get the author some fame/recognition, and maybe some funding???

***** the more opposed they were to violence and punitive policies (like torturing their enemies as advocated by Trump)

But Harry, our plucky boy hero, was a torturer himself, no? Surely he'd be in favour of doing bad things to people who deserve it, like Amycus Carrow??

***** If reading Harry Potter does help lead people to greater tolerance and mercy, we shouldn't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

Honestly, the idea that just reading a thinly disguised conservative fable like Harry Potter is all we need to do to re-mould Trump supporters into liberal democratic voters is, to me, symptomatic of the very retreat into fantasy that almost certainly contributed to Hillary's loss. I hate to be rude, really, I do, but fidelity to Harry Potter and other cultural commodities like Hamilton, won't help anyone.

If you want to resist fascism, to the extent that you think Trump embodies it, you have to put your magic wand away
This article explains it pretty well (http://thebaffler.com/blog/crash-pop-culture-party-silverman)


While this turn to the many cherished worlds of fiction may well be helping people work though their bewilderment, it reveals not imagination but a dismal lack thereof. By refusing to engage with the world as it is, by seeing in every political disaster an opportunity to indulge in escapism and dime-store nostalgia, pop-culture liberals overlook the very real horrors already looming for swaths of the population, including those who have never seen Doctor Who. It is its own kind of filter bubble, a self-contained world of soothing bedtime stories.

Harsh but fair, imho.

Anyway my own opinion is that Harry Potter has a fascist weltschaltung as explained here (https://samkriss.com/2016/09/13/jk-rowling-and-the-cauldron-of-discourse/)

In which case, what we may need is more critical opinions of beloved cultural commodities, not less.

Just my opinion :)

[oryx_leucoryx]

I am curious to know how views and values differed between people who just read the series once or twice vs people who just read it multiple times vs people who actively discussed the series (whether online or in physical space). Also differences between readers who identified as fans and those who did not, between people who had a positive view of the series and those who did not (but read it entirely nonetheless).

[madderbrad.livejournal.com]

Just wanted to say 'thanks!' for that second link, the Sam Kriss article. I'm not sure about the climax of the piece; it sort to sneaked up on me because I was having so much fun cheering at his depiction of Rowling as her own #1 fan and his mocking of her tweets (I've been criticising same in another forum). Great stuff!

[merrymelody.livejournal.com]

Please stop the personal attacks, commenters and op, or this post will be deleted.

[zigadenus.livejournal.com]

Cheers, mod! Thanks for posting this; the fraught direction that the discussion took was making me pretty uncomfortable last night, and sorry that I'd poked my head up. Glad to see you making this post.

[chicory-fics.livejournal.com]

Hello, I used to lurk here about two years ago? And recently I've again read a few posts here and there.

I'm not going to say anything about the methodology used in the study because, well, I don't know anything about methodologies.

But I just find it little bit hard to believe that a series that was basically just post-modern identity politics could affect anything in a meaningful, positive way.

To me, Harry Potter was a nostalgia-trip where people got to play tolerant, good and sophisticated while at the same time being horrible bigots to anyone who wasn't/didn't think like them. And yes, I am talking about the supposed good guys who are only good by virtue of identifying as such.

And I always found it a little, I don't know, icky? that Muggle-borns (like Harry... although I guess he is half?) basically ended up imposing their will on every wizard who didn't agree with him/them in the wizards' own society?

Sure there were wizards with them but from what I remember those wizards were equally or even more horrible bigots than their supposed evil counterparts.

And every supposed good character in the book was plenty violent. They were just violent towards accepted targets. Like the characters who basically just said or thought nasty things because yes, you deserve to be lynched for your thoughts.

Well, anywho, Harry Potter didn't really make more opposed to "violence and punitive policies". It just made me really opposed to Harry Potter. Of course, this is subjective and it might have worked on others. I cannot speak for other people.

Uhh, and I shall go back to random lurking because this makes me really anxious.

[vermouth1991.livejournal.com]

You know, the first time I read about the obliviating Muggles so that they don't learn about magic, I was reminded of the Men In Black premise that all alien activities and sightings must be wiped out from earthling witnesses' minds. But then I realized that this was different, in that the MIB both monitors the peaceful aliens who only seek a low key life as refugees on earth, and also foil the earth-threatening plots that come at least once a week, whereas the HP wizards mainly do it to cover up their own asses, especially when it comes to Dark Magic attacks.

Can't wait for someone to write about the Fantastic Beasts movie, though.

[merrymelody.livejournal.com]

Hey, welcome. I'm a bit of a lurker myself, despite lazy modding once in a while; but yeah, that's pretty much how I feel.

If people get something good out of it, great; but I think if anything, JKR's pronouncements on the topic (as well as generally on social media) now it's over, as well as the spinoffs (Cursed Child, Fantastic Beasts) pretty much prove the longrunning argument that the series doesn't have a coherent set of beliefs or morals.
This is an author who can't even commit to an opinion on torture or slavery.
Her fandom seemed happy enough when she gave them enough space to fanwank that she just forgot or ran out of space to include diversity, but her inability to leave the text alone means by engaging, she reveals that her liberalism has very set limits (magicians of colour exist! I just don't want to write about them when I could have another straight white male lead like every book I've ever written! Gay people - or men, at least - exist! It's just that their homosexuality is a corrupting influence on their entire lives! I'm a feminist, but I save my public criticism for Paris Hilton, etc. Johnny Depp can totes get cast in my movie after domestic abuse, after all, 'people go up and go down' in the public eye.)

[madderbrad.livejournal.com]

I think the paper makes a mistake in ignoring the Rowling influence; how people who have read the books might be swayed by her real-world opinions. As far as I can see none of the survey questions touch on this. There's nothing about "do you follow Rowling in the news, on twitter, etc" at all. Questions about exposure to the books. Exposure to the movies. But not exposure to Rowling and her never-ending commentary, on Twitter and otherwise, about current affairs in the muggle world.

The HP phenomenon is huge, with most fans happily reading the books with an uncritical eye. The 'skim readers' that annoni_no championed in a comment here, the ones who are content with their 'surface reading' ... they've read the HP books, happily decided that they're on Harry's side (he is, after all, the nominal hero and good guy), that they're heroes fighting the good fight, and then, when they see Rowling calling Trump 'Voldemort' - Rowling did draw the equivalence, and it was picked up by the USA media (of course) - they react accordingly. And relatively unthinkingly. They think what Rowling thinks. (To the minor unexplained correlation 'gap' observed by the article.)

The paper makes no bones about it - " If Trump is analogous to Voldemort – indeed some have begun using the term “Trumpdemort” (see www.redbubble.com)—then one would expect Harry Potter readers and viewers to be more likely to oppose Trump and his policies." Well ... yes. Of course. Most certainly if Rowling and the media introduce the idea for them and point the way! If you liked the HP books then you should see Trump as Voldemort! And a *lot* of people liked the books.

The paper strives to suggest that HP is 'good', that it preaches against racism and such, and that, in reading the material, one might be influenced similarly to think good thoughts and eschew Trump. I think it's simpler than that. HP readers enjoy the books but they don't cogitate mightily on the values wherein. Many of them are only innoni_no's 'surface readers', after all. No. They don't pick up on what's in the books. They pick up what Rowling is tweeting!

Goodness knows there are umpteen HP fans across the world who slavishly follow their 'Jo' on matters regarding HP, no matter how trivial. So why are we surprised that reading HP would influence repudiation of Trump? It's just another aspect of the Rowling bandwagon. The pack is following her lead, once again.

The paper's last question asked about 'attitude towards Trump'. It should have included one more - 'attitude towards J. Rowling'. With a scale of responses from 'Who?' through to 'I admire her', "I've read what she's said about Trump" and "I am a huge fan, OMG I love her, Jo is the best!". We may have found the few extra points of correlation with the number ticking that last answer.

If one of my personal heroes made a point of telling me that 'Trump is Evil' I'd probably be persuaded as well. Clinton had a number of celebrities campaign on her behalf. If you are a fan of Beyonce then you might have been swayed by the singer's appearing for Clinton. That was, after all, the whole idea.

So as it turned out J. Rowling fronted up for Clinton as well. And it just so happens that the people influenced by *her* have read the Harry Potter books! Probably something like a 99.9% correlation. :-) So it's no surprise at all to see that reflected in this survey, to see that there is some slight extra anti-Trump bias for readers of Harry Potter. There's no magical beneficence gained in reading Harry Potter. All is explained by the anti-Trump campaigning by Harry's author.

[zigadenus.livejournal.com]

An interesting new study, somewhat topical and relevant to this discussion: http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/12/should-psychologists-study-fiction/509405/?utm_source=atltw