Celeb worship Flashcards
Who developed the celebrity attitude scale, and in what year?
McCutcheon, Lange and Houran, 2002
34 item scale
What is the absorption-addiction hypothesis?
An absorption with an addictive component, leading to more extreme behaviours and comprised identity structure
- McCutcheon, Lange and Houran – 2002
- 249 participants completed items modelled after existing celebrity worship questionnaires
- 249 participants (more women)
- Age range = 10-68 years
- A subset of 17 unidimensional items was discovered
- Dubbed the “Celebrity Worship Scale”
- Low worship involves individualistic behaviours such as watching and reading about a celebrity
- – At slightly higher levels, celeb worship takes on a social character
- – Highest levels are characterised by a mixture of empathy with the celebrity’s successes and failures, over-identification with the celebrity, compulsive behaviours, as well as obsessions with details of the celebs life
- Based on the findings of these results, the authors propose a model of celebrity worship based on psychological absorption (leading to delusions of actual relationships with celebrities) and addiction (fostering the need for progressively stronger involvement to feel connected with the celebrity)
What personality traits are associated with the 3 dimensions of celebrity worship?
Entertainment-social = extraversion
Intense-personal = neuroticism
Bordeline-pathological = psychoticism
- Maltby, McCutcheon and Houran, 2003
- 317 participants = UK university students (18-27 years old) and UK adults (22-60)
- Found that the 3 dimensions of celebrity worship parallel the 3 dimensions of Eysenckian theory (Eysenck and Eysenck, 1985): extraversion, neuroticism and psychoticism
- The dimensions of personality could help promote or hinder progressively more extreme behaviours
- Neuroticism is also related to anxiety and depression
What evidence is there to support the association between celebrity worship and Eysenckian personality theory?
The finding by Maltby, McCutcheon, Ashe and Houran (2001) that celeb worship for intense personal reasons has been related to depression and anxiety lends support to the association between neuroticism and intense-personal celebrity worship
What coping styles are associated with the 3 dimensions of celebrity worship?
Entertainment-social = E-COPE = emotional social support, instrumental social support, focus on and venting of emotions
Intense-personal = NI-COPE = denial, behavioural disengagement, mental disengagement, do not deal effectively with everyday events
Bordeline-pathological = P=COPE = turning to religion, drug and alcohol use
- Ferguson, 2001
- Supported by Maltby, Day, McCutcheon, Gilett, Houran and Ashe (2004) whose findings largely replicate Ferguson’s results
What factors could influence celebrity worship?
Maltby, Day, McCutcheon, Gilett, Houran and Ashe, 2006
- 372 respondents completed measures of celebrity worship, personality, coping style, general health, stress, positive and negative affect and life satisfaction
— Aged 18-47 years
- Age may influence celebrity worship, since interest in celebrities may wane with age
— But no significant relationship between age and celeb worship for any of the types
- Education may influence celeb worship
— People with a higher level of education may not be as enamoured with celebs
— But no significant relationship found for any of the types
- People who are employed and people who are married may be less interested in celebrities
— They have less time to devote to celebrities
— No significant difference for either on any of the types
- Uses CAS which was developed by some of the researchers who are also involved in this study = personal interest could affect results, leading to bias?
- Intense-personal celebrity worship is associated with poorer mental health
— This relationship can be understood within the dimensions of neuroticism and a coping style that suggests disengagement
Giles and Maltby, 2004
- Celeb interest was investigated in a sample of 191 British adolescents
- Aged 11-16
- Used a shortened version of the CAS
- It was found that, after controlling for age-related effects, high emotional autonomy was a significant predictor of celebrity interest
— As well as high attachment to peers and low attachment to parents
- Intense-personal interest was best predicted by low levels of security and closeness
— Suggests that celebrities provide adolescents with a secondary group of pseudo-friends during a time of increasing autonomy from parents
— An extended social network
— Intense focus on a single celebrity may result from difficulties in making this transition towards emotional autonomy
- Emotional autonomy and attachment to celebrities increase during adolescence and are positively related to one another
- No details were obtained about the nature of the celebrity that each respondent chose as their favourite
— The function of relationships with different types of celebrity may be related to other aspects of social psychological development
Giles and Maltby, 2006
- Negative association between intense-personal celebrity worship and cognitive flexibility
- This suggests that individuals who engage in intense-personal celebrity worship are unable to consider options or to implement alternatives to problems
Vega, Magpantay, Zapanta, Tolentino, Varona, Tengco-Pacquing – 2013
- CAS was administered in its usual format to 600 English-speaking college students
- Median age of 19
- Philippines
- Total CAS mean score was the highest ever recorded
- Suggests that celebrity adoration has become increasingly common in the East hemisphere as well as the West
Sheridan, North, Maltby and Gillett – 2006
- 2 studies assessed the relationship between celebrity worship and addiction (n = 1359) and criminality (n = 2158)
- Addiction correlated positively with 1 component of celeb worship
- Criminality correlated positively with all 4 components produced by the current work
Maltby, Houran, Lange, Ashe and McCutcheon – 2002
- As religiosity increases for both men and women the tendency to “worship” celebrities decrease
McCutcheon, Gillen, Browne, Murtagh and Collisson - 2016
- The study explores the pattern of correlations between the CAS and its subscales and several measures of the quality and type of intimate relationships (Love Attitudes Scale)
- Participants = 330 undergraduate students, 74% female, from unis in the eastern and central US, aged 18-60
- The results suggest that excessive celebrity admiration is associated with a combination of previous poor quality intimate relationships, current ones, and the expectation of poor quality intimate relationships in the future
- The persons who score high on the 2 problematic subscales of the CAS also tended to resolve intimate relationship conflicts by arguing rather than compromising
- The tendency to argue was negatively related to the tendency to compromise
- Persons who experience a great deal of anxiety in close relationships also tend to have high scores on the 2 problematic subscales of the CAS
- Those participants who tended to endorse the soulmate belief also tended to be more absorbed and addicted to their favourite celebrity
- Study limitation: participants were not specifically asked if they were currently in an intimate relationship, or if they had ever been in one
What evidence is there for the validity of the CAS?
Maltby, Houran, Lange, Ashe and McCutcheon – 2002
- An attempt to provide further psychometric validation of the CAS
- Participants = 126 men and 181 women
- 11 of the items on the CAS were not found to be useful among the study sample – hence the CAS is commonly cut down from 34 items to 23
- The results generally supported those of an earlier study showing that the Celebrity Attitude Scale has good psychometric properties
