Why Hogwarts Sorting Hat Is a Bad Idea
The Hogwarts Sorting Hat, the main body of the Harry Potter myth, has become one of the most famous psychological tests of Western culture, more than Myers-Briggs or Carrie. It is inspired by real-world quizzes on BuzzFeed , Pottermore , The Guardian and many more sites . TIME Magazine recently developed a challenging Sorting Hat quiz based on psychological metrics such as the Big Five personality traits .
At Hogwarts, Sorting Hat results have enormous implications for a student’s social and athletic life, academic performance, and career. Could any psychological test conducted at such a young age accurately identify each student? Or does the Sorting Hat, like the scientifically dubious Myers-Briggs , give people an appreciation for a reductionist pseudo-psychology? I asked Dr. Ali Matta, clinical psychologist, Harry Potter fan and YouTube host of The Psych Show , if the sorting hat was too authoritative. His analysis:
I have no problem with the Hogwarts Sorting Hat itself. I am fully committed to the idea of a sentient hat that uses Legilimency mind reading to understand the thoughts, values, and desires of a Hogwarts freshman. This is in line with Harry Potter’s magical psychology about how thoughts can be manipulated with the mind-controlling Imperius Curse and the Memory Extraction Spell. But the way Hogwarts distributes students to their homes is a terrible way to run a school.
Your brain, your values, and your personality continue to evolve into your 20s, and there is some evidence that your personality continues to change at certain times in your life . We have no way of knowing if someone is primarily brave like a Gryffindor, loyal like Hufflepuff, wise like Ravenclaw, or cunning like a Slytherin at 11 or 12, at the age of freshmen at Hogwarts. At that age, young, quiet and shy, I would have been classified as a Hufflepuff, but a 20-year-old self-confident young man would have been more of a Gryffindor. Currently? Career ambitious, I am a solid Slytherin.
The triage ceremony at Hogwarts sends a dangerous message to students: who you are is determined. The reality is that when you believe that your abilities can change and you are in a supportive environment, you can change yourself. This is called the growth mindset . At Hogwarts, the Sorting Hat sends the message, “This is who you are, this is who you will be, and go be with others like you.” A child who struggles with reading, gets rejected by Ravenclaw and ends up in Gryffindor may begin to believe that he will never be a great student and should simply choose a more physically intense career path.
The sorting ceremony also becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. From the Milgram obedience experiment to the Stanford University prison study, there is a long line of psychological research that says situations matter and we acquire the qualities that are expected of us . The Slytherins will get smarter because Slytherins do that. Gryffindors will take more risks because this is part of the history of Gryffindor and this is something that is encouraged in the house. This is probably why Neville Longbottom went from the timid Gryffindor freshman to the brave leader of Dumbledore’s Army in Book 7. It’s also how business students get better at entrepreneurship, why lawyers are so attentive to detail, and why doctors are great diagnosticians.
Separating students from home reduces creativity. We know teams are most creative when people from different backgrounds come together in a place where they can disagree . Grouping students in different homes based on their qualities and encouraging them to remain isolated increases the chances that those students will think the same way, offer the same solutions, and struggle to understand people’s perspectives that are different from themselves.
If I were the Headmaster of Hogwarts, I would still use the Sorting Hat and have four faculties, but I would ask him to make sure that every home has students who represent all the qualities that make people successful in life.
In terms of the TIME test, the Big Five is a great indicator of personality if people remember that it reflects your personality right now . Personality changes over the course of your life, and the idea of assignment to homes based on this test (no matter how accurate) is a problem. People associate the home they are in as permanent, and these homes are associated with strong personality traits. Another issue here is potential social desirability bias when you answer questions in a way that you think is best. It is fairly easy to find out what questions each home has. So if you really want to be sorted one by one or the other, it’s easy to do.