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As the familiar story goes, not long ago there was an orphan who on his 11th birthday discovered he had a gift that set him apart from his preteen peers. Over the years he endured the usual adolescent challenges - maturation, relationships, social conflicts, general teenage neuroses. He also faced the less common challenge of battling a murderous, psychopathic wizard set on establishing a eugenic police state. I’m referring to the young wizard Harry Potter, the protagonist in author JK Rowling’s wildly popular fantasy book series; his nemesis is Lord Voldemort, the story’s malevolent antagonist. And new research suggests that Rowling’s world of house-elves, half- giants and three-headed dogs has the potential to make us nicer people.

For decades, it’s been known that an effective means of improving negative attitudes and prejudices between differing groups of people is through intergroup contact - particularly through contact between “in-groups,” or a social group to which someone identifies, and “out-groups,” or a group they don’t identify with or perceive as threatening. Even reading short stories about friendship between in- and out-group characters is enough to improve attitudes toward stigmatized groups in children. A new study________ in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology_________ that Reading the Harry Potter books in particular _________ similar effects, likely in part because Potter is continually in contact with stigmatized groups. The “muggles” get no respect in the wizarding world as they lack any magical ability. The “half-bloods,” or “mud-bloods” - wizards and witches descended from only one magical parente - don’t fare much better, (01) while the Lord Voldemort character believes that power should only be held by “pure-blood” wizards. He’s Hitler in a cloak.

(Sep 9, 2014, By Bret Stetka http://www.scientificamerican.com/author/bret-stetka/(adapted).)

The author states that Harry Potter is a protagonist who puts up with all the circumstances below, except