Celebrity Worship and Its Relationship to Television-Watching Motives: A Brief Report

There appears to be growing evidence to suggest that celebrity worship is of interest to social scientists, as witnessed by the publication of more than 40 papers on the topic since the development of a valid measure of celebrity worship (McCutcheon, Lange, & Houran, 2002; McCutcheon, Maltby, Houran, & Ashe, 2004) . McCutcheon, et al. (2002) proposed an Absorption-Addiction model to explain celebrity worship. Several studies based on the Celebrity Attitude Scale (CAS; Maltby, Houran, Lange, Ashe & McCutcheon, 2002; Maltby, McCutcheon, Ashe & Houran, 2001; McCutcheon, et al., 2002) are consistent with this proposed model and suggest that there are three increasingly more extreme sets of attitudes and behaviors associated with celebrity worship. People with low levels of celebrity worship perceive television viewing as having Entertainment-social value; this is reflected in their agreement with statements like My friends and like to discuss what my favorite celebrity has done. This stage reflects social aspects of celebrity worship. According to this model, a weak identity structure in some individuals facilitates obsession with a celebrity, leading to an intermediate level of celebrity worship characterized by more Intense-personal feelings. This second level is defined by items like I have frequent thoughts about my celebrity, even when don't want to. This level reflects individuals' intense and compulsive feelings about the celebrity, similar to the obsessional tendencies of fans often referred to in the literature (Dietz, Matthews, Van Duyne, Martell, Parry, Stewart, Warren and Crowder, 1991; Giles, 2000). The most extreme expression of celebrity worship is labeled Borderline-pathological, as shown in items like If were lucky enough to meet my favorite celebrity, and he/she asked me to do something illegal as a favor would probably do it. This factor is thought to reflect an individual's borderline pathological attitudes and behaviors that are held as a result of worshiping a celebrity. Using this model, researchers have examined the relationship between celebrity worship and models of self-reported mental health and personality. Generally speaking, these same studies support the generalization that the lowest level, Entertainment-social, is relatively benign; it is linked to extraversion (Maltby, Houran, & McCutcheon, 2003; Maltby, McCutcheon, & Lowinger, 2011), which is consistent with the idea of being entertained by one's favorite celebrity, then discussing the performance with friends. On the other hand, both of these studies revealed a link between the Intense-personal dimension and neuroticism. Further, materialism and envy were positively correlated with Borderline-pathological in a recent study (Green, Griffith, Aruguete, Edman, & McCutcheon, 2014), suggesting that the two higher levels of celebrity worship are somewhat unhealthy. Since the 1940s, researchers have investigated why people use certain mass communication mediums (Waples, Berelson, & Bradshaw, 1940). Waples et al. reported that people read books in order to address person needs (e.g., prestige, respite, security) and these people received certain gratifications from reading (e.g., self-esteem, reinforcement, instrumental information). Researchers have since studied why people read the comics/newspapers, listen to the radio, go to the movies, and watch television, an area of research now called Uses and Gratifications (Katz, Blumler, & Gurevitch, 1974). There are various assumptions of Uses and Gratifications Theory (Rubin, 1983, 1994), including: (a) that people are motivated to communicate and actively seek and use the media, (b) that media behavior is purposeful, goal oriented behavior, and (c) that the media compete with other forms of communication to satisfy the needs of individuals. People make their media selections in order to address their needs or to receive gratifications. …