Harry Potter Fans With No Life

Reading Harry Potter Makes You a Better Person, Science Says So

We knew it!


By Sarah Schreiber
Jan 26, 2017

Prepare to be disarmed by this magical tidbit: Kids that read Harry Potter grow up to be kinder, more accepting adults. Oh wait — that's not magic. That's science.

According to a study published in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology in 2011, Harry Potter lovers are more accepting towards stigmatized groups, like immigrants, refugees and members of the LGBTQ community.



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"I remember the kids on the first day of shooting. They were completely awestruck. They could not for the life of them stop looking at the lights, stop looking into the camera… They couldn't stop smiling because they were so happy to be there." - Chris Columbus #tbt #ThrowbackThursday #Throwback #HarryPotter
February 18, 2015
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The study followed elementary school, high school and college students who had all, at some point, read the series. Findings showed that "identification with the main character (Harry Potter) and disidentification from the negative character (Voldemort)" made participants more likely to be open-minded and less likely to hold stereotypic prejudices against alienated people.

It doesn't take a Hermione to figure out why that is.

The fight between good and evil isn't the only central source of conflict in J.K. Rowling's saga. Muggles, goblins, giants and house elves are all marginalized peoples and creatures that Harry encounters during his coming of age — he always accepts, and oftentimes loves, the ostracized. We don't need to rehash his last encounter with Dobby — hold on, grabbing tissues — to hit that home.



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"Dobby never returns my calls now. I think he's gone Hollywood. I hear he's got a very big agent and doesn't get out of bed for less than a million dollars a day." - Jason Isaacs #tbt #ThrowbackThursday #Throwback #Dobby #JasonIsaacs #LuciusMalfoy
September 11, 2014
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Also consider the fact that Harry, himself, struggled tremendously in his youth — he was orphaned, forced to grow up in a closet and subjected to the Dursley's wrath (and then hunted by fiction's scariest villain, but I digress). Harry gets it. Harry knows where you're coming from.


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"This is him fighting back, and even though it was Hermione who initially persuaded him to form the D.A., he finds he loves teaching. Harry is such a lonely person, even in a crowd, but in this class, he is teaching and doesn't have to think about his own problems." - Daniel Radcliffe #HarryPotter #TBT #ThrowBack #DumbledoresArmy
August 27, 2015
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At the end of the day, Harry is much like us. He's not the handsome hero (RIP Cedric) nor is he a magic mastermind (RIP Dumbledore). Potter uses friendship and love to compensate for pretty average wizarding skills (his go-to spell is Expelliarmus, which really says it all), showing both the wizarding world and our world what goodness really looks like — and that "pureblood" and "mudblood," where and who we come from, have absolutely nothing to do with it.


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"Every single scene, every single moment is about how a character feels, about the emotional core of the scene and of the character. David understands emotion. He brings that sensibility to this film, which is a spectacle. But the spectacle works best when it is grounded in an emotional center." – David Heyman on David Yates' directing #HarryPotter #TriviaTuesday
August 25, 2015
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So if you really needed another excuse to start the Potter series with your kids, there you have it. In a nation divided, there's no better time to learn how to use the only magic us muggles have available — kindness, love and acceptance.

[h/t Mirror UK http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news ... ou-9678047]

"Dobby never returns my calls now. I think he's gone Hollywood. I hear he's got a very big agent and doesn't get out of bed for less than a million dollars a day." - Jason Isaacs