In the celebrated film and literary saga Harry Potter, the great villain of the story — Voldemort — is known to the wizarding world as "He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named", or simply "You-Know-Who". To speak Voldemort's name aloud means danger, and even death. In the early days, Harry Potter was essentially the only one bold enough to call him by name. Voldemort's name had become a taboo across the wizarding world. So how, exactly, does a taboo take shape, and why does it come to stand for fear?
How a Taboo Takes Shape
So how, exactly, does a taboo come to be? At the level of society, every one of us is encouraged to follow a shared set of values and standards of moral conduct. That set of norms and values is itself shaped by the culture and thinking of the group, and is at the same time highly representative of it. These codes of conduct also encompass various social norms and taboos, and they shape the patterns of our daily lives — our words, our deeds, the way we carry ourselves. The way we come to understand these "unwritten rules" is that the transmission of information plays a crucial role. Our parents, the education we receive at school, and so on, all take on the role of that messenger, teaching us this set of social norms and the taboos that must not be broken. And because of this, that set of values becomes deeply rooted in our minds.
Beyond this, taboos are also enforced through social punishment (Fershtman et. al, 2011). In Harry Potter, given Voldemort's formidable powers and influence, witches and wizards the world over are too afraid to call him by name. In the early part of the story, whenever Harry Potter refers to him directly as Voldemort, the people around him immediately criticise and reproach him for it. From this we can see that, when we come up against these taboos, the reactions and attitudes of others in society become a form of social punishment — and this kind of social punishment is also a form of positive punishment. In operant conditioning, an operator strengthens or reduces a particular behaviour in an individual by administering reward or punishment (Skinner, 1963). Positive punishment is when, upon an individual displaying a certain behaviour, an aversive punishment is applied to them, so that the individual comes to associate the behaviour with its corresponding punishment, thereby lowering the likelihood of the individual carrying out that particular act. In the same way, through social punishment, people can be deterred from coming into contact with the event or object in question, which thus becomes a taboo.
The Fear of Taboos
In Harry Potter, the wizarding world's fear of Voldemort is plain to see. Even the stern Professor McGonagall shudders at the sound of Voldemort's name. What is more, the very word "Voldemort" carries a curse, so that those who dare to speak it aloud are put in mortal danger, making the price of this taboo all the greater. Beyond the mortal danger it may bring, what is it about a taboo itself that makes people afraid? Human beings are social animals, the sum of their social relationships (Aronson, 1992). The social punishment that a taboo brings leads to social censure, and even to being isolated, all of which serves the ends of social conditioning. From the perspective of evolutionary psychology, all social behaviour can be explained through the process of evolution (Bolhuis et. al, 2011). As far back as the Stone Age, we survived in tribes of fifty to a hundred people, and so each day we would only come into contact with a handful of people close to us. Right up to modern society, we still perceive living alone as dangerous, and feel safe only within the group. So we avoid any action that might lead to our being isolated, and choose instead to blend in with the crowd. This also explains why we dread the social punishment a taboo brings, and thus come to fear taboos.
What Taboos Do
Because Voldemort's name had become a taboo of the wizarding world, Voldemort could easily use the curse to hunt down those who dared to say his name aloud, defeating those brave enough to stand against him. From this we can see that a taboo is indeed an exceptionally effective way of regulating behaviour, achieving social control. Compared with other methods of social control, when it comes to deterring a particular behaviour, a social sanction always has a limit (Cole et. al, 1998). With a taboo, however, even merely the thought of breaking it is punished, and the social punishment that these thoughts bring is also self-inflicted (Fershtman et. al, 2011). And so, even if it is merely the thought of breaking a taboo, the taboo is able to punish it. Although these self-inflicted punishments may seem trifling, they are already enough to deter people from even contemplating acting in violation of the taboo.
Beyond this, a taboo is also an indispensable part of social identity (Fershtman et. al, 2011). When you choose to take on a particular social identity, that means you accept the taboos and social norms that come with it. This desire to maintain a certain social identity then drives people to self-punish over any thought of their own that violates the taboo. From this we can see that, once a taboo is woven into the very characteristics of a social identity, it can effectively regulate the people who hold that identity, leading them to govern their own thoughts and behaviour, and thereby achieving effective social control.
Breaking the Taboo
If this is so, then why, throughout history, have there still been so many who break taboos? Out of his hatred for Voldemort, Harry Potter never gave in; he still chose to call Voldemort by name, and gradually drew the friends around him to follow his lead. As the economist Chaim Fershtman (2011) put it, a taboo only holds meaning when there is a latent private benefit in turning away from it. For Harry Potter, only by breaking these taboos and defeating Voldemort could he avenge his parents. Yet if a person has not first weighed up breaking the taboo, the benefit that breaking it would bring is not obvious to them. And so this "weighing-up process" is itself a learning process. In the course of it, the private benefit of breaking the taboo comes to light: people observe whether their own private benefit can truly be realised by breaking the taboo, and what the price of breaking it would be. After that, people then decide whether or not to break the taboo. However, given the steep price of breaking a taboo, people will choose to break it only when the private benefit that might be realised outweighs the cost of breaking it. For Harry Potter, his desire for vengeance and for defeating Voldemort was stronger than his fear of the latent danger, and that is why he chose to break the taboo. At the same time, because the strength and influence of a taboo are affected by the number of people who flout it, when more and more people choose to break a taboo — or even merely contemplate breaking it — that taboo is indirectly weakened. Just as, after Harry Potter broke the taboo, his actions and his resolve to defeat Voldemort gradually spread to those around him, so that everyone began to dare to call him by name, and the taboo around that name grew weaker and weaker. From this we can see that, although the power of a taboo is strong, it is not in fact impossible to dismantle.
Some taboos exist to serve a certain protective function — for instance, certain dangerous behaviours, or acts that may bring destruction or loss of life. But at the same time, some taboos exist to serve the private interests of those in power, and their control over others. Voldemort, for example, in order to hold on to his supreme authority and power, used taboos to control the people of the wizarding world. Given the nature of taboos, people's very thoughts come to be regulated, becoming a form of social control that issues from within themselves. The truths these taboos conceal are too costly, and the price of breaking them is far too great to bear, and so we can only choose to carry on playing the fool, waiting for the next Harry Potter to come along.
References
Aronson, E. (1984). The social animal. New York: W.H. Freeman.
Bolhuis, Johan J, Brown, Gillian R, Richardson, Robert C, & Laland, Kevin N. (2011). Darwin in mind: New opportunities for evolutionary psychology. PLoS Biology, 9(7), E1001109.
Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia (2020, February 28). Taboo. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/taboo-sociology
Cole, Harold L, Mailath, George J, & Postlewaite, Andrew. (1992). Social Norms, Savings Behavior, and Growth. The Journal of Political Economy, 100(6), 1092-1125.
Fershtman, Chaim, Gneezy, Uri, & Hoffman, Moshe. (2011). Taboos and Identity: Considering the Unthinkable. American Economic Journal. Microeconomics, 3(2), 139-164.
Skinner, B. F. (1963). Operant behavior. American Psychologist, 18(8), 503–515.
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