"I'm Your Number One Fan"- A Clinical Look at Celebrity Worship

Abstract

Celebrity worship-is it more than just being a casual fan? To explore this question, a number of scales have been developed to assess celebrity adulation. The most prevalent scale of this type in the literature is the Celebrity Attitudes Scale. Using these types of scales, investigators have examined various college-student and community samples. Findings reveal that individuals with high scores on celebrity-worship scales tend to display a number of psychosocial characteristics. For example, these individuals may harbor concerns about body image (particularly young adolescents), be more prone to cosmetic surgery, and have a personality style characterized by sensation-seeking, cognitive rigidity, identity diffusion, and poor interpersonal boundaries. Likewise, celebrity worshippers may exhibit narcissistic features, dissociation, addictive tendencies, stalking behavior, and compulsive buying. Studies also indicate that individuals with high levels of celebrity worship are more likely to have poorer mental health as well as clinical symptoms of depression, anxiety, and social dysfunction. Of note, no study to date has examined celebrity worshippers for bona fide Axis I and II psychiatric disorders. However, given that celebrity worship exists along a continuum, it appears that being on the high end of this continuum is likely to be associated with a number of potential psychological maladies.

Keywords: Celebrity Attitudes Scale; Celebrity worship; fan; fanatic.