| Summary: | Information about celebrities has steadily increased over time and is currently available every day in multiple venues. Our study examines whether extreme interest in celebrities has increased over the past 20 years. The Celebrity Attitude Scale appeared in its 23-item iteration in 2001 and has been used extensively since then, making it possible to observe trends in the strength of celebrity admiration over the past two decades. Using archival methods, we gathered data from 35 studies (2001-2021) that included US participants who completed the Celebrity Attitude Scale. We established objective criteria for determining the proportion of participants from each study who qualified as “celebrity worshippers.” Our results indicate that celebrity worship increased dramatically from 2001 to the present. The implications of increases in celebrity worship are important, given research showing that high levels of celebrity worship are often associated with undesirable attitudes and behaviors, such as anxiety, depression, obsessive thoughts, suicide attempts, excessive gambling, disordered eating patterns, and difficulty maintaining intimate relationships.
|
|---|
