Harry Potter: Reducing Prejudice

The reviewed article is apart of the journal of applied Social Psychology and is called The Greatest Magic of Harry Potter: Reducing Prejudice. It explains and describes a study that was conducted with the use of Harry Potter novels context. The entire purpose of the study was to test whether continual contact with Harry Potter books, improves attitudes and perspectives of isolated groups and people (Vezzali, Stathi, Giovannini, Capozza and Trifiletti, 2015).
The researchers conducted three studies in total for this project, and had extended contact with the participants and had used social cognitive theory and parasocial contact in order to extend their hypothesis. In order to have consistency between the participants in each study, the

The stigmatized group that was used in this study is homosexuals, which is also a very highly rejected and isolated group. The method used was, the students were given two questionnaires, for two unrelated studies. One study, concerned the liking of Harry Potter, the novel, and the films. The second study was a research on social attitudes, and had certain topics concerning homosexuals. The study that the researchers conducted supported the hypothesis that reading harry potter novels is associated with improved attitudes toward stigmatized groups such as homosexuals among a sample of high school

That reading Harry Potter novels improves attitudes toward stigmatized groups among those identified with Harry Potter as the positive character and less identified with Voldemort the negative character. Some weaknesses from the research study were that it is important to note the children’s behavioral changes and not just based on questionnaires. Another factor that should be taken into consideration, are the factors that shape a child’s attitudes, beliefs, opinions and behaviors. Parents, teachers, the education system, media, news and many other things shape a person’s view. Some strengths and good thoughts put into the study were that the researchers asked how many books a child read in a year. It is important to know how many books a child reads in a year, as it could increase a student’s literacy level and help grow their knowledge and views as well. Some next step suggestions for this research, would be to have each study done in different cultural areas. For this experiment all three studies were done in European countries. If one study was done in North or South American countries, Asian countries and European countries, then a bigger conclusion could have been drawn from comparing the results from the