Abstract
The Harry Potter series describes the adventures of a boy and his peers in a fictional world at the “Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry”. In the series, pupils get appointed to one of four groups (Houses) at the beginning of their education based on their personality traits. The author of the books has constructed an online questionnaire that allows fans to find out their House affiliation. Crysel, Cook, Schember, and Webster (2015) argued that being sorted into a particular Hogwarts House through the Sorting Hat Quiz is related to empirically established personality traits. We replicated their study while improving on sample size, methods, and analysis. Although our results are similar, effect sizes are small overall, which attenuates the claims by Crysel et al. The effect vanishes when restricting the analysis to participants who desired, but were not sorted into a particular House. On a theoretical level, we extend previous research by also analysing the relation of the Hogwarts Houses to Schwartz’s Basic Human Values but find only moderate or no relations.
Highlights
As readers are immersed in a fictional world, they examine characters’ points-of-view, reacting and connecting with them—as well as with other fictional elements—through identification, parasocial interaction, or imitating behaviour
Except for the hypothesis for Emotional Stability, all our hypotheses are supported: the models in which Gryffindor scores the highest on Extraversion, Ravenclaw scores the highest on Intellect, Personality Traits across Houses
The variance explained by the Human Values is slightly lower than the variance explained by the personality measures
Summary
We extend previous research by analysing the relation of the Hogwarts Houses to Schwartz’s Basic Human Values but find only moderate or no relations Cultural mass phenomena such as book series can have a long-lasting effect on social attitudes, emotional perception, and personal relations (Gabriel & Young, 2011). The Harry Potter series provides an excellent opportunity to study how readers identify with fictional elements, and how these elements could potentially influence readers’ own behaviours and perspectives (Crysel, Cook, Schember, & Webster, 2015). The series has several features that foster identification processes, such as belonging to a narrative genre, providing realistic characters with common experiences to those of the reader (including heavily stereotyped behaviour; Cohen, 2001), building a
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