As any Harry Potter fan knows, Gryffindors are known for being brave, Ravenclaws are the intellectual ones, Slytherins are cunning, and Hufflepuffs are loyal and hard-working. After all, the house you identify with is supposed to be based on your personality.
However, this is not entirely the case if we talk about the movies. If so, Neville Longbottom would be a Hufflepuff and Hermione Granger a Ravenclaw. And it is that, if we talk about the saga, the Sorting Hat is based on the following theory: the house you are sorted into has nothing to do with your personality at all, but with what traits you value most and what you could be.
Having this contextualized, let’s leave magic aside and get into real life, because according to several studies, the official website of this saga, called Wizard World, which presents us the possibility of going through the Sorting Hat, does take into account our decisions in the test to assign us, as users, to one house or another.
Pottermore, JK Rowling’s extension, now called Wizard World
ANDn 2012 the Pottermore website was launched, at a time when the main series was ending. From the hands of its author, JK Rowling, we were presented with this rather striking interactive website.
It featured new writing by Rowling on Harry Potter and was tied to the release of all seven original books in electronic format. It also served as a complement to each movie in the saga, with little details about the characters, the places and much more. It was the Harry Potter encyclopedia that Rowling always promised, but in digital format.
One of the great attractions of this website, which you had to go through if you wanted to access the rest of the content, was the Sorting Hat. Through a series of quiz questions, the Hat assigns Pottermore users to one of the four Hogwarts houses: Slytherin, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw and Gryffindor.
Over the years, Pottermore never quite found its footing. The site changed its design and purpose several times and didn’t really resonate with people like it did in the beginning. This is why the website announced that it would move much of its content and functions to WizardingWorld.com.a new site that was launched in the summer of 2019.
The new site features a Magical Passport, which allows users to store their Hogwarts House, Patronus, Wand, etc. Everything you had on the other website, goes to the new one.
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The personality of each Hogwarts house
Once we know which test and website we are referring to, it should be noted that Personality traits are relatively stable and enduring internal attributes that make us different from or similar to other people.. They describe how we are, how we react to our environment and how it reacts to us.
However, What personality is associated with each Hogwarts House? Let’s start from this base to delve into the personality-Selecting Hat relationship.
one. Gryffindors are described as brave and daring throughout the entire saga. Psychological research shows that these attributes are related to several personality traits: extraversion, positivity, openness to experience, and creativity.
2. Hufflepuffs are described as loyal, fair, hardworking and nice and they relate to the concepts of fairness and kindness in personality psychology, optimistic, hard-working, efficient, and organized.
Which Hogwarts house do you belong to?
3. Ravenclaw house highly values wisdom and a willingness to learn new things. Therefore, we could assume that the students classified in this house are usually people willing to debate, solve problems and discuss different ideas.
4. And, in the end, the Slytherins. They are usually portrayed as the bad guys. Are cunning, intelligent and would do anything to achieve their own goals.
People associated with this personality type would score high on what is known as Dark Triad (sounds like science fiction), a psychological concept that is related to three personality traits: Machiavellianism, narcissism and psychopathy. The basis of the three traits of the Dark Triad is the tendency to dominate in society and to progress oneself.
Classification ceremony in real life
Now, knowing all this, let’s see why science, based on several psychological studies, considers that this test does position you in one house or another, based on aspects of your personality with simple questions and it is not something absurd and without more to satisfy the fans.
And it is that, the authors of one of the studies, from 2015, which we leave you below, report that significant associations between personality characteristics and House affiliation, in line with the book’s depictions, already explained.
It is important to note that the Sorting Hat Test was not developed for any scientific purpose, and includes questions with ambiguous content such as “Sunrise or Sunset?” Y “Heads or tails?”and other complex ones like “If you went to Hogwarts, which pet would you choose to take with you?”with many options.
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Well, in this study, 132 web users were asked which house they had been assigned to and then asked to solve different personality tests.
All houses, except Gryffindor, confirmed the expected results: Hufflepuffs scored higher than others in agreeableness and conscientiousness, Ravenclaws in need to know, and Slytherins in the Dark Triad.
For any psychologist, These results are quite surprising. Personality tests often ask you about your usual behavior, such as how often you go out with people or if you get angry easily. The Wizard World quiz, as most know, has none of that.
And it is that in those personality tests, which are sometimes done in job interviews, on the one hand, they are not perfectly reliable, which means that errors are possible and, on the other, they are based on the lies of those who want to get the job.
You will never know how reverse psychology works
Therefore, the decisions of the Sorting Hat are much faster than those of a psychologist to use. With all this we can see how JK Rowling’s understanding of the nature of personality has allowed her to create realistic and relatable characters.
On the other hand, another study consulted, which we leave you here, reconfirms this relationship, in which, even if it is a test of a web about a saga, it does really discover your personality and the association to one house or another is quite successful. The participants sought to match those houses that reflected the personality traits with which they identified themselves.
It is also true that they clarify that the classification of JK Rowling’s characters in different houses seems to correspond to already established psychological constructs, despite not having training in personality psychology, at least as far as we know.
It should be noted that, although identification processes could be linked to personality traits, not much can be learned about that from someone who has been sorted into a particular Hogwarts House.
The findings of the 2015 study are not value judgments, but rather a qualitative psychological assessment. Furthermore, the study reflects trends, not universal truths. An exception is Slytherin, which gives rise to a lighter result, represented by aggressiveness and the Dark Triad.
With all this on the table, It seems that fans who feel absorbed by the Harry Potter saga could be feeling something much more real than mere fantasy.concludes the study.
George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism