What your favorite ‘Harry Potter’ house says about your IRL personality, according to science
While we might never be sorted into a Hogwarts house IRL, we’ve at least taken a few (or, a dozen) Harry Potter house quizzes online, right? The most stressful one has to be the Pottermore quiz, since it has been blessed by the Hogwarts mastermind herself, J.K. Rowling. If there’s anyone who can stare into our soul and tell us where we belong, it’s Rowling. Now, thanks to a new scientific study, it appears as if that sorting house process isn’t completely random, and instead, really and truly shows us different traits about our personality.
This new study, “Harry Potter and the measure of personality: Extraverted Gryffindors, agreeable Hufflepuffs, clever Ravenclaws, and manipulative Slytherins,” surveyed 132 Pottermore members who had already been sorted into houses. From there, they took a personality assessment, and compared the average scores for each house with the whole group. Not surprisingly at all, the results were very much tailored to the known traits of each house.
For example, Ravenclaws were shown to have a “need for cognition,” aka knowledge. Slytherins were found to be a tad narcissistic. Hufflepuffs were pretty easy going. The only results that were a little bit off were those in Gryffindor, who “didn’t match up to their fictional counterparts” — and that makes sense. Even though we might know deep down inside we’re not meant to be in Gryffindor, we’re going to try to get sorted into Gryffindor, since that’s where Harry, Ron, and Hermione spend their time (in the interest of full disclosure, I was sorted into Gryffindor, and I’m pretty sure I’m not Gryffindor material AT ALL, so, at least for me, that disconnect is true).
The study also found “a correlation between the personality of each fictional house and the people who reported that they wanted to be in it, regardless of where they were actually placed.” Basically, if you want to be a brave Gryffindor, you’re going to manifest the persona of being brave, even if you’re actually a big scaredy cat. But, thinking you’re brave is enough to make you brave, and thus, a coveted spot in Gryffindor is yours.
On top of all of that, the study also found that “fiction can reflect real underlying personality dimensions.” So if you wake up every morning, thinking about how awesome, clever, and smart Hermione is, that can make you even more awesome, clever, and smart, too.
The full study is avaliable online right now (for few dollars) and in the scientific journal, Personality and Individual Difference. What house were you sorted into? Do you feel like your personality matches up? Or are you a Ravenclaw who knows you’d do great things in Slytherin?
(Image via here.)
