Is Harry Potter a Tory? Why folks consider fictional heroes share their political beliefs | EUROtoday

People within the UK are more likely to consider that fictional heroes like Harry Potter and Gandalf would share their political beliefs, whereas villains like Darth Vader and Cruella de Vil would vote for opposing events, new analysis exhibits.

The University of Southampton researchers behind the examine say this tendency, for folks to undertaking their very own views onto fictional characters, is fuelling political polarisation.

The tendency additionally prolonged past fiction. When introduced with information tales about politicians partaking in charitable or corrupt behaviour, members tended to affiliate the “good” politician with their most popular occasion and the “bad” politician with the opposition.

Dr Stuart Turnbull-Dugarte of the University of Southampton defined the implications of those findings: “If we see ‘villains’ as belonging to the opposite facet, then we additionally are likely to affiliate an increasing number of adverse attributes with that group.

“This is not only bad news for polarisation, but also makes us more easily susceptible to misinformation that confirms the existing biases we hold about the voters of certain parties.”

The first of two studies, conducted by researchers from the University of Southampton and the University of Vienna, surveyed 3,200 individuals in the United Kingdom and United States.

Participants were asked which political party they believed various fictional characters from popular franchises, including Marvel, Disney, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, and Star Wars, would support.

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In the UK they were asked if the characters were more likely to vote Labour or Conservative, while in the US they were asked if they would vote Democrat or Republican.

The answers were then cross-referenced with the respondents’ own political leanings.

The researchers for the study, published in the journal Political Science Research and Method, found that people were 20 per cent more likely to project their own politics onto a hero than a villain.

The respondents were also 20 per cent more likely to say a villain would vote for the opposing party than their own.

In the second study, 1,600 people in the UK were shown one of two contrasting news stories about a local councillor – one in which the councillor donated money to a local charity and another in which they had stolen money from the charity.

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The results showed that about one in six people falsely remembered which party the councillor represented, with a “strong tendency” to see the charitable donor as a member of their occasion, and the thief as a member of their rival occasion.

Dr Turnbull-Dugarte mentioned: “People believe heroes are more likely to belong to their group but can accept a proportion might not. Respondents were much more consistent when identifying a villain as belonging to the other group.

“In a context where polarisation is high, projection appears to be more about defining who we are not, than who we are.”

He added that the tendency to see heroes on their facet and villains on the opposite was higher amongst these with stronger political identities, with these on the political left extra inclined to take action than these on the correct.

Dr Turnbull-Dugarte added: “To overcome increasing political division, we need to recognise this tendency to project heroic and villainous traits along partisan lines and recognise that reality is always more complex and nuanced than our biases would have us believe.”