Who is the sorting hat on harry potter

However, we do not wish to question J. Rowling, as albeit opaque to us, she might have had deep reasons for including such questions; moreover, being a proprietary test, the scoring rules are not public. This viewpoint may be substantiated by the results of Crysel et al. We refer back to this tension between face validity and predictability in the discussion. Two main concerns were present with regards to Crysel et al. Thus, selecting short measures of personality could pose some problems in the latter analysis.

Ultimately, this situation would also affect the classical significance test involved. Second, the choice of short versions for personality measurements may have undermined internal consistency see Table 1 in Crysel et al.

Finally, we believe that the analysis proposed by Crysel et al. In the current study, we aim to address these limitations by conducting a replication of Crysel et al. This hypothesis is based on human values Table 2 being more closely aligned with House descriptions as reflected in the Harry Potter books. According to Schwartz , the relative importance of multiple values one holds guides actions, distinguishing the existing values by the theoretical model from one another by the goal or the motivation they express Table 2.

To our knowledge, the relation between Human Values and the identification with fictional elements has not been explored in the literature before. Basic human values and their descriptions Schwartz, Statistical analyses were performed using the R environment for statistical computing R Development Core team, This research was conducted in accordance to the Declaration of Helsinki, with ethical approval granted by the Department of Psychology, Centre for Croatian Studies, University of Zagreb, prior to data collection.

All participants provided informed consent for survey procedure, and were informed about data handling procedures prior to their participation. We recruited participants through social media Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit , private contacts, and student e-mail groups.

Of the participants who took part in our study, 91 participants were excluded for not meeting the age criterion of 18 years, and one for indicating an age of We removed 49 of the remaining participants as the Sorting Hat assigned them to multiple Houses, resulting in a total sample size of Table 3.

The median age of the remaining participants was 23 with a standard deviation of 4. The majority of participants were women Prior to the start of this study, each participant was requested to, if they have not done so before, complete the Pottermore Sorting Hat Quiz. The items and scoring key of the Sorting Hat Quiz are not publicly available, and our multiple attempts to obtain access have not been successful.

In general, the Sorting Hat Quiz uses a database of 28 questions and eight questions are displayed to each test taker. The questions have a range of possible answers and the questions seem to not always be related to a particular trait of the House members, although most have a clear relation to a certain part of the Harry Potter series and Houses described in it. Subsequently, participants were asked for the assigned Hogwarts House membership and whether it constituted their desired House.

We had no means to check whether the person was providing rightful information with regards to the House assigned by the Pottermore quiz, as we had no access to the quiz itself and thus had to trust individuals to provide sincere responses. Additionally, participants were asked to declare which House they would like to have been sorted in. Building upon the hypotheses proposed by Crysel et al.

The IPIP 50 encompasses ten items per trait, and it provides higher reliability than other alternatives Ypofanti et al. To improve reliability, we again replaced the original questionnaire with an alternative. However, it is possible for Gryffindor to have significantly higher scores than the mean of the other Houses even if Ravenclaw and Slytherin have higher scores than Gryffindor.

For this situation to happen, the remaining House e. Thus, this statistical approach could provide misleading results under specific but not unlikely circumstances.

Ravenclaw highest on Intellect? Hufflepuff highest on Agreeableness, Emotional Stability, and Conscientiousness? Slytherin highest on Machiavellianism, Narcissism, and Psychopathy? We use Bayesian order-constrained inference to assess the evidence for these hypotheses. For a gentle introduction which incidentally uses Harry Potter as an example, see Etz and Vandekerckhove First, we specified a restricted model M r that reflected our substantive hypothesis. This definition reflects our hypothesis that members of a specific House are expected to score the highest when compared with members of other Houses.

Second, we estimated a full model M f where the means were allowed to vary freely. In other words, this model reflects a lack of knowledge regarding which House if any will score higher or lower. Finally, we estimated a model M 0 in which all means were constrained to be equal. This model reflects the hypothesis that House membership is not associated with personality.

For each of our hypotheses, we tested which of the three models was supported by the data using Bayes factors. The Bayes factor formalizes how well one model e. Consequently, a higher Bayes factor when comparing M r against M 0 would indicate that data are supporting our hypothesis compared to the hypothesis that all Houses have the same mean. To compare all three models at once, we transform the Bayes factors into posterior model probabilities.

Interpreting these posterior model probabilities requires care. First, we have assigned uniform priors to models, and readers may prefer different priors. Second, by reporting posterior model probabilities, we have effectively reduced the number of possible models to three. Prior information is needed in Bayesian inference. Overall, individuals scored higher in Intellect and Agreeableness and lower on Dark Triad traits especially Narcissism and Psychopathy , irrespective of House membership.

In contrast with Crysel et al. Table 5 displays the posterior model probabilities for each hypothesis. We find that, 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, Hufflepuff scores the highest on Agreeableness and Conscientiousness, and Slytherin scores the highest on Machiavellianism, Narcissism, and Psychopathy have the highest posterior probability, respectively.

Note : Due to rounding errors, probabilities can exceed 1. This distribution quantifies the uncertainty about a yet unseen data point for a particular House and dependent variable, given the data we have observed. On each line, shows, for different personality traits, the posterior distribution of the proportion of variance explained by assuming four distinct Houses.

Note that variance explained differs substantially between, say, Emotional Stability EmStability with 0. In our study, similar as in Crysel et al. Conversely, most people who desired a particular House were sorted into that House see Table 3. Following Crysel et al. Thus, the desire to be sorted into a particular House—even if not sorted into that House—has very similar effects compared to being sorted into that House.

What about people who have been sorted into a House that they did not desire to be sorted into? If the same pattern of results emerges, we could conclude that Crysel et al. We tested this by restricting our analysis to participants who were sorted into the Houses they did not desire which resulted in 92 Gryffindors, 90 Hufflepuffs, 55 Ravenclaws, and 58 Slytherins.

These results suggest that Crysel et al. We conduct a similar analysis as above for the Human Values data; Figure 4 shows the raw data. Table 6 displays the posterior model probabilities. Note that the second column indicates our confirmatory hypotheses and that our approach can be easily generalized to multiple order restrictions. I've sorted high, I've sorted low, I've done the job through thick and thin So put me on and you will know Which house you should be in Are you afraid of what you'll hear?

Afraid I'll speak the name you fear? Not Slytherin! Not Gryffindor! Not Hufflepuff! Not Ravenclaw! Don't worry, child, I know my job, You'll learn to laugh, if first you sob. The Sorting Hat appeared to have a difficult time in the sorting of Harry Potter. It suggested that Harry would have great fame and glory by joining Slytherin House, as Harry possessed Slytherin qualities such as cunning and determination. Harry requested specifically to be spared that fate.

Instead, based upon this choice, the Hat placed him in Gryffindor, where both his parents had also been Sorted. In the next year at Hogwarts, the Hat also played a critical role in Harry's success against the Basilisk. The sword and hat together are the only two known relics of that wizard. He indicated that the Sorting Hat might put him in the Slytherin House, and that its judgement may be faulty after being repaired.

However, as the hat is said to be old and patched from its first appearance, it would seem this worry is needless. Harry also reassured him that Albus' middle name was named after Severus Snape , a Slytherin headmaster, and Harry would had no hard feelings towards Albus, Slytherin House or the Hat if he was to be sorted to there.

The Sorting Hat also appeared to have had a disagreement in the sorting of Hermione Granger , as her expansive intelligence made her well suited for Ravenclaw , but it decided to place her in Gryffindor.

This can be clearly seen when Hermione doubted books and cleverness as the traits of a great witch and instead shows that friendship and bravery are more important. Hermione also stated that she thought Gryffindor House was by far the best of the four. Ron was afraid that he would be the only Weasley not to make it into Gryffindor. Mere moments after the Hat touched his head it announced his house. The moment the Sorting Hat was placed on Draco Malfoy , the hat instantaneously declared Draco would join the house of Slytherin.

Almost all of his family was sorted into that house, including his parents Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy , and aunt Bellatrix Lestrange , as well as a long line of his ancestors from the House of Black. He had many of the qualities associated with the Slytherin house, and he was the last surviving descendant of Salazar Slytherin.

The Sorting Hat took a long time to decide upon where to put Neville Longbottom. During his sorting Neville argued with the hat, saying he was best in Hufflepuff. The Hat argued otherwise, and declared Neville to do greatly in Gryffindor. Neville was intimidated by Gryffindor's reputation; however, his persistence did not work and the hat successfully sorted him into Gryffindor. In addition, during the Battle of Hogwarts, Neville was able to draw Gryffindor's sword from the Hat if done so, the person was considered a true Gryffindor , despite Voldemort attempting to destroy it, and then used it to behead the snake Nagini.

Minerva McGonagall was what was considered a Hatstall, meaning the Sorting Hat took over five minutes to decide where to put her. Hatstalls were very rare. Later, she became a teacher at Hogwarts and head of her old house. It was her job to place the Sorting Hat on the heads of new students.

Later, he became a teacher at Hogwarts and head of his house, and joked with Minerva McGonagall about the fact that they had the opposite experiences and if things had gone another way, they could have had each others' jobs. For the complete quiz, click here. To accomplish this, we worked with the researchers to develop a question quiz compiled from several well-established scientific personality surveys, choosing questions that related to prevalent themes in the books.

Over several weeks, we recruited hundreds of Harry Potter fans to take this survey on behalf of 20 different characters from the books, five from each House. The tens of thousands of data points we gathered gave us a detailed portrait of how different personality traits correspond to the personalities of members of each of the four Houses. In the spirit of many other projects where TIME has partnered with social scientists to allow readers to participate in their research, this quiz invites you to anonymously submit your responses to the researchers, which will contribute data to their studies.

It may seem a little unusual to apply the sophisticated field of personality psychology to a fictional universe, but a close reading of the Harry Potter canon — or in many of our cases, several close rereads — suggests something interesting: The Sorting Hat is itself a personality test! So it made perfect sense to try and deconstruct that process into a scientific survey.