More People Need(ed) to Read Harry Potter

2016-11-23T14:24:00Z

Posted by: 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.

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death to capslock

More People Need(ed) to Read Harry Potter