Celebrity Worship

Daniel Espinoza

Psy 260

Dec. 1, 2003

Everyone has an entertainer that we follow and like, but when does that like of a person become more than that. Is it possible for a person to become obsessed with an individual you don’t even know? Unfortunately it is, according to an article entitled: A cognitive profile of individuals who tend to worship celebrities, celebrity worship is a form of parasocial interaction in which individuals become obsessed with 1 or more celebrities. This obsession is similar to an erotomanic type of delusional disorder in which the individual believes that another person is passionately in love with them. A group of psychologist wanted to determine if this obsession/worship of celebrities had any common characteristics amongst the individuals. They conducted several test: celebrity attitude scale, intense-personal, and 6 cognitive measures. At the end of these tests they found that people with higher cognitive functioning are better at realizing reality then those with lower functioning.

I thought that this group of psychologist that conducted this study did a very good job of randomizing the test to minimize the probability of a systematic order effect. As well as making sure that the groups were well divided and used several measures to arrive to their conclusion. Although a sample size of 102 people was used for the testing