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

[zigadenus.livejournal.com]

On more sober reflection of this topic, please do just ignore my other responses here. I think we're at risk of discussing this from two very different perspectives -- for my part, I'm talking research methodology alone, and couldn't honestly care less whether the topic is "Harry makes people nicer" or "Kale consumption predicts empathy". It's just not that interesting to me, and I don't think people reading or not-reading Harry Potter is going to be a solution to any of the social and economic problems that have been on the rise in your country.

[jana-ch.livejournal.com]

I want to thank you for taking a look at the methodology. Since I was the first to question the solidity of the study, I felt I ought to check it out rather than just snarking it sight-unseen, but I was too lazy. Fifty “Geography 426” points to your House for taking on the job.

I suspect the study is picking up on reading in general, not just reading the Potter books.