death to capslock

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.

From:

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.

From:

seductivedark.livejournal.com

Not everyone is of the same political persuasion here.

From:

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.

From:

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.)

From:

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.

Edited Date: 2016-11-26 09:04 pm (UTC)

From:

Ah! Thanks, I'll have a look.

From:

Interesting; Livejournal doesn't allow me to edit my comment any more, because you just replied. Hmmm. Anyway -

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 another abstract is embedded within that. Finally, the paper itself is a PDF found in a link in that abstract.

You can get to it eventually. :-)

From:

[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.

Edited Date: 2016-11-26 11:18 pm (UTC)

From:

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.

From:

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.

Could very well be! It's important to remember, too, that the study didn't ask if participants were fans of Harry Potter -- only whether they'd read the books (and how many), or seen the movies. So we're on slippery ground in even trying to deduce anything about whether the participants liked the books or just read them. There's too little data available to support the majority of the conclusions.

Edited Date: 2016-11-26 11:32 pm (UTC)

From:

Where on Earth did I imply that? All I, and the study, said was that reading Harry Potter is correlated with people becoming kinder, more tolerant, and more opposed to cruel and vindictive policies. It made no judgment values, only noted that these values correlate with a decreasing sympathy for Donald Trump. Since he has loudly and repeatedly expressed his support for bigotry, xenophobia, and torture, ('I would waterboard them and a whole lot worse') this shouldn't be a surprise.

At no point does the study say that anyone who doesn't read Harry Potter takes the opposite stance on any of these issues and is de facto monstrous for doing so.

From:

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.

From:

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.

From:

Eh, I think my point was lost somewhere. I didn't, in any way, negate the position that literacy promotes empathy. Personally, I'm of the opinion that Stephen Pinker is spot-on, there. I only performed a methodological analysis of the construction of their study, and pointed out there was a simple way that they could have explicitly tested the hypothesis that it's Harry that matters, and they didn't do that. My entire post was more in the nature of explaining that we can only reason so far with the data as collected -- and that neither the author's arguments, nor inferences about HPfen characteristics can be adequately treated with the data as it was collected. And the data didn't address Republican vs Democrat at all -- the study only asked the participants' attitude toward Trump in particular.

Edited Date: 2016-11-27 02:54 am (UTC)

From:

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.

From:

kahran042

If it says that that reading Harry Potter is correlated with people becoming kinder, more tolerant, and more opposed to cruel and vindictive policies, then it implies that not reading it makes them crueler, less tolerant, and less opposed to cruel and vindictive policies, and since you support the study, you obviously think so, too. Anyway, since you obviously hate people who don't blindly worship Harry Potter, what are you doing on this community?

From:

kahran042

If you want to white-knight the series, do it on your own blog.

From:

kahran042

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

From:

kahran042

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

From:

And the data didn't address Republican vs Democrat at all

I should clarify this in that specific ideologies defining Republican vs Democrat were not addressed. There could be many reasons why a person chooses one or another. Everything from critical study to family tradition of voting for a particular party may be at play. Thus, voting affiliation may tell us very little about personal political beliefs. A better way to determine ideology (if you want to make sweeping statements about Republican vs Democrat), is to include in the survey a set of questions where the participant is asked to rank how much they agree or disagree with lists of ideological statements -- just like VoteCompass. From that, you cluster the participants as ideological Republicans, Democrats, etc. It has the value of being replicable.

To explain what I mean by that, let's examine how it is potentially erroneous and leading to draw parallels between this study and statements like "Republicans are less likely to read books". While there may indeed be studies that demonstrate that, we do not know if those studies are defining 'Republican' the same way as it is defined here. 'Voter affiliation' is useless without context -- someone who affiliated themselves with the Republicans under GW Bush might hesitate to do so under Trump; someone with Democratic affiliation under Clinton may not have voted for Gore. So depending upon when a study was conducted, it may be comparing different parts of the population entirely.

Edited Date: 2016-11-27 05:02 am (UTC)

From:

Something causing a rise above a baseline does not imply the lack of it causes a sink - it can just mean it STAYS AT THE BASELINE. And I don't worship Harry Potter. I said in this very post that it's not perfect. By far. But not being perfect doesn't mean that it does more harm than good, let alone that it is inherently awful. Is there something about that too complicated for you to understand, or are you just a troll?

From:

And you're an idiot who lacks the most basic reading comprehension and grasp of logic.

You don't have to like Harry Potter, and I completely agree that THE BOOKS HAVE A LOT OF PROBLEMS.... 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.

There, emphasized that for you.

I say right there that the books ARE NOT PERFECT. I've commented on problematic issues on this very community. My point is that, on balance, despite the problems in the books, they seem to do more to help people become better than they were rather than making them worse or having no effect at all.

Have I dumbed that down enough for you, or are there still too many polysyllabic words?

From: