Social Psychological Explanations of the Attraction of Celebrity Flashcards
Explain the social comparison theory
Festinger - put forward the social comparison theory. This is a general theory which suggests we evaluate ourselves by comparison with other people. Comparison with other people similar to us will give us realistic perception. However we also make downward comparisons with lower status people and upward comparisons to establish what we should aspire to. This can explain why celebrities are popular when they are successful, but why we enjoy hearing about problems in their lives. It can also explain why some people exposure to figures in the media can lead to negative body image and low self esteem as well as encouraging unrealistic materialistic aspirations.
Explain parasocial relationships
A relationship by TV viewer of friendship and intimacy with a remote media persona. This term was introduced by Horton et al. Parasocial relationships differ from real relationships because they are one-sided.
There is evidence that parasocial relationships resemble real ones. When real relationships end people involved experience negative emotions such as distress and depression. Research showed the more intense a person’s parasocial relationship with a character in “Friends”, the more distress the individual showed when the series ended.
Parasocial relationships have advantages over real relationships as the person involved is undemanding and uncritical and there is no risk of rejection.
The positive/active view says parasocial relationships have positive functions.
i) For lonely or shy individuals
These individuals may find it hard to establish real relationships, but not parasocial relationships. There is some evidence for this. A weak relationship was found between shyness/loneliness and strength of participants’ parasocial relationships with celebrities. Lonely participants experienced more distress than non-lonely ones after the last episode of “friends”.
ii) For adolescents at the time of increasing independence from parents
Adolescents and young adults are more likely to engage in celebrity worship than older adults. Maltby et al - studied British children aged between 11 and 16. Those who reported an intense personal interest in a celebrity reported low levels of closeness to others and low attachment to parents. This suggests celebrities provide adolescents with a secondary group of pseudo-friends.
iii) for people whose attachment experience means they find relationships difficult
Ainsworth identified secure, avoidant and resistant attachment children using the strange situation. Participants with resistant attachment were most likely to form parasocial relationships (celebrity attraction lets them express emotion without fear of rejection); those with avoidant attachment were least likely (past experiences means they are unlikely to invest emotionally in relationships); those with secure attachment were in the middle (they have satisfactory real life relationships so don’t seek additional relationships with celebrities).
What is an alternative view to parasocial relationships?
The addiction-absorption model - this suggests people who have a weak sense of personal identity or poor psychological adjustment develop abnormal relationships with celebrities.
Explain the Celebrity Attitude Scale (CAS)
McCutcheon developed it. Some items measured the entertainment/social sub scale e.g. “My friends and I like to discuss was X has done” (a number of people score highly on this sub-scale)
Other items measure the intense/personal sub-scale, e.g. “I consider X to be my soul mate” (A small number of people score highly on this scale).
Remaining items measure the borderline pathological scale , e.g. “If X asked me to do something illegal as a favor I probably would” (An even smaller number of people scored highly on this scale.)
Evaluate social psychological explanations
Matlby et al - found some research evidence for links between celebrity attraction and poor psychological adjustment.
There are a number of problems with this research
i) A lot of the research uses correlation. Most assessments of celebrity attraction rely of questionnaire data.
ii) There is a lack of reliability in research findings (e.g. some research found adolescents are no more likely to be attracted to celebrities than adults).
iii) Culture bias - most research has been carried out in Western societies.
Discuss evolutionary explanations of the attraction of celebrity
This relates to Darwin’s theory of natural selection. Evolutionary psychologists explain human behaviour in terms of how behaviour might have been adaptive in our evolutionary past. The environment of evolutionary adaptation (EAA) refers to a time 35,000 to 3 million years ago when our ancestors lived in a mobile hunter gatherer groups on the African Savannah. Neural hardwiring has been slow to catch up, so we still show behaviour which evolved response to the specific problems faced by our ancestors in the EEA. A number of evolutionary explanations have been suggested.
i) For our ancestors gossip was a way of reinforcing social bonds and keeping track of potential dangers. Humans used to sit around camp fires talking about people they knew. The modern media has been described as the global campfire. We are fooled into seeing media characters as key memebers of our social network. celebrities trigger the same mechanism that evolved to keep up with the affairs off in-group members. It also makes evolutionary sense to copy high-status individuals, hair, clothes etc.
ii) Humans have a love of novelty (neophilia). Although natural selection favours the development of skills that promote survival, sexual selection might favour creativity and fantasy. Celebrities represent this fantasy world, so we are attracted to them.
iii) Celebrities may be seen as desirable sexual/romantic partners. Evolutionary theory suggests males and females differ in terms of parental investment. Females are looking for mates with resources (to take care of them and their children) so should be attracted to older rich celebrities. Males will seek fertile females so should be attracted to young female celebrity.
Evaluate evolutionary explanations of the attraction of celebrity
-Evolutionary theory is hard to test and is not falsifiable. This is a problem for a scientific theory.
-It ignores cultural influences on which celebrities are seen as attractive
+ The approach fits with our increased understanding of how genes influence behaviour
Although evolutionary theory reduces behaviour to the level of genetic factors, it is not really reductionist because it considers the functions of behaviour.
Evolutionary explanations can be described as determinist because they suggest our behaviour is affected by factors other than free will.
Evaluate the general concept of the attraction of celebrity
There is no clear explanation of why celebrity attraction seems to have increased in recent years. Also, individual differences are clearly important. The main explanations are not mutually exclusive. Several explanations may play a part.
Discuss celebrity worship
The celebrity attitude scale (CAS) uses tree sub-scales. Entertainment social, where the person sees the celebrity as providing entertainment and a common source of conversation with friends; Intense-Personal, where the person develops intense feelings and thoughts about the celebrity which borders on obsessional; Borderline-Pathology, where the person develops uncontrollable thoughts and fantasies, often believing they have a real life relationship with the celebrity. These people would be classified as celebrity worship.
However even though the scale produces a useful measure of celebrity worship the survey relies on retrospective and subjective opinions from participants. If the person is suffering from delusions it is not clear whether they will be able to answer the survey accurately.
Explain McCutcheon et al research into Celebrity worship
Used the CAS to survey 600 people. They found tha 20% feel into the fist dimension, 10% into the second and only 1% into the borderline-obsessional dimension. They concluded that those in the third dimension start to become delusional, believing in their own fantasies, where as the first 2 dimensions the person maintains a sense of reality. This study not only uses a large sample it is also supported by many other studies increasing its external validity.
Explain Cheung and Yue research into Celebrity worship
discovered that adolescents who ‘idol worship’ celebrities were less successful in their studies and work and has lower self esteem than adolescents who ‘worshipped’ teachers and family members. However, this study seems fully understandable considering those who ‘worship’ teachers and key family members would receive tangible help and benefits in their lives which of course increase their academic and work success leading to higher self esteem. Also, just as there is an association between self esteem and celebrity worship it does not mean that one caused the other. There could be a third independent factor causing these two things such as a lack of a parental figure.
This study is supported by Maltby who also discovered that celebrity worship was associated with low levels of psychological well being. They discovered the entertainment-social dimension could predict a social dysfunction where as the intense-personal dimension could successfully predict depression and anxiety.
Even though celebrity worship can seem abnormal to us, evolutionary psychologists would argue it was a product of perfectly normal evolved behaviour. For our ancestors those who received attention in society would have been someone increased the success of society through for example hunting. These skills were ‘worshipped’ and so more likely to be repeated which in turn increased our evolutionary success. Even though this behaviour no longer aids our survival it still lingers from our ancestors. Other benefits could include participating in a social network of fans.
What is celebrity stalking?
Celebrity stalking is an extreme variation to celebrity worship where a person wilfully follows, harasses and threatens the victim.
Explain Zona’s research into celebrity stalking
Identifies three types of stalking. the first type is called erotomania where the stalker develops sexual obsessional thoughts about the target person often believing they have a love bond with them. The second is the celebrity stalker where the stalker has a complete loss of reality while developing erotomanic and other psychotic delusions focused on a target person. The third is the rejected stalker who seeks revenge against an ex partner due to a failed relationship.
Zona’s idea that celebrity stalking is associated with psychotic delusions is supported by the many documented celebrity case studies. For instance, in 1995 robert hoskins broke into madonna’s estate many times leaving noted on her front door step asking her to marry him. On one of his ‘visits’ he was shot in the shoulder and later arrested. In his cell he graffitied his walls with slogans about madonna. When questioned about the graffiti he claimed madonna had visited him, and she wrote them herself.
Explain Dressing’s, Tonin’s and Kienlan’s research into celebrity stalking
Celebrity stalking can have very negative consequences on the victim. Dressing et al - found that the majority of victims were female and most of the stalkers were male. They discovered that 56% of the victims felt agitated, 44% had anxiety symptoms, 41% had developed sleep disturbances and 28% developed depression.
Tonin - claimes that celebrity stalking could be a result of the attachment style during infancy. She compared stalkers detained under the mental health act with non stalkers and found the stalkers where significantly were more likely to have had an insecure attachment with their care giver than the non stalkers.
This study can be criticised as it is based on the participants’ retrospective memories of their childhood and relies on participants telling the truth even though many stalkers already have a distorted grip on reality in the first place. However this study is supported by many other studies.
Kienlan et al - found that most of the 25 stalkers they studies in Missouri jail had had significant childhood attachment disruption.
