Friday Fun: In which Hogwarts House do you belong?

The Sorting Hat on Harry Potter

The Sorting Hat perfectly divines people's personalities, something us mere muggle psychologists can only dream about doing. Yet we continue to try. So in honor of the final Harry Potter movie premiere tonight, I scoured the internet to find some psychology-based quizzes that will tell you, with science-backed certainty, in which Hogwarts House you belong.

A quick overview of the houses for those of you who don't have your Hogwarts primer handy:

 "You might belong in Gryffindor,
Where dwell the brave at heart,
Their daring, nerve, and chivalry
Set Gryffindors apart;

 Students of Gryffindor are typically brave, daring, and chivalrous. 

You might belong in Hufflepuff,

Where they are just and loyal,
Those patient Hufflepuffs are true
And unafraid of toil;

Hufflepuff students are friendly, fair-minded, modest, and hard-working. 

Or yet in wise old Ravenclaw,

if you've a ready mind,
Where those of wit and learning,
Will always find their kind;

Ravenclaw students tend to be clever, witty, intelligent, and knowledgeable.

Or perhaps in Slytherin

You'll make your real friends,
Those cunning folks use any means
To achieve their ends.
--The Sorting Hat Song

Slytherin students are typically cunning and hungry for power. 

The Quizzes:

The first quiz is from personalitylab.org which was developed by Chris Soto, a professor of personality psychology at Colby College. This 122 question quiz is based on the California Child Q-set and requires you to rate a series of statements on a 9-point scale (1 = Extremely Uncharacteristic to 9 = Extremely Characteristic).

The second quiz is from helloquizzy.com, a website created by OKCupid.org. According to their website, this 126 item quiz is true or false and was "formed using questions similar to those used in the NEO-PI Personality Inventories, measuring the "Big Five" Personality traits (Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism)."

I've always thought of myself as either a Hufflepuff or a Ravenclaw. I took both of the quizzes to see where they placed me and (drum roll please)...

The first quiz let me know I was a member of Hufflepuff and gave me the following breakdown about my Hogwarts House personality:
Hufflepuff: 83%
Ravenclaw: 67%
Gryffindor: 57%
Slytherin: 44%

The second quiz put me in Ravenclaw with the following break down:
Ravenclaw: 59%
Hufflepuff: 49%
Slytherin: 48%
Gryffindor: 42%

Confession: I'm more than a bit embarrassed that I'm more of a Slytherin than a Gryffindor (and nearly as much a Slytherin as a Hufflepuff!) according to helloquizzy.com. But this quiz did give me several detailed paragraphs of information about my Ravenclaw personality, letting me know things such as the fact that "openness to experience" is an essential part of the Ravenclaw house and that these individuals are intuitive creatures and the quintessential researchers. That may describe me, but I'd like to think their comment that I should leave the leading up to others is less than accurate; and they definitely got it wrong when they suggested I lacked a "rule-abiding quality."

I'd be curious to know who came up with these detailed personality assessments based on Hogwarts Houses (does anyone remember Rowlings describing Ravenclaws as lacking "rule-abiding qualities"?). I'd also love to know what details they give about the personality in the other three houses (but not enough to go back and try to rig the quiz three times. Yes... I considered it).

Why the differing results?
You know, besides the fact that they are sorting me into fictional houses and thus there is no true, validated, scoring system? Well, overall the questions contained similar content, but the difference between selecting a number on a 1-9 scale and having to select true or false affected my answers. This is because for the true or false questions I was forced to select many traits I'm not sure about, or feel I only do a little, as being either or not it was characteristic of me, and that can be hard to do! Welcome to the difficult world of muggle personality measurement.

Ultimately it was really fun and interesting to take both of the quizzes and see how I answered the questions on each of them, and hey... I ended up being a Hufflepuff-Ravenclaw, which is right where I thought I should be (I'd love to claim I was a Gryffindor, as I'm sure we all would, but I think after just a few interactions with me you'd know bravery and fearlessness are, unfortunately, not my defining characteristics).


Take one or both of the quizzes and let us know what you scored in the comments!!


For more information about the California Q-set and the Big Five (and their relation to each other):

McCrae, R., Costa, P., & Busch, C. (1986). Evaluating comprehensiveness in personality systems: The California Q-Set and the five-factor model Journal of Personality, 54 (2), 430-446 DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-6494.1986.tb00403.x