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 the group wasn't chosen by random selection. Also the group itself wasn't evenly distributed; it contained 81 men with only 21 women. I don't really understand how they concluded with there test that lower cognitive function was a common trait of celerity worshipers. This statement is too generalized for me; it covers a very large range of people of which not all show obsessive behaviors.

This study was executed in a good manner but I believe that if they would have increased their selection group (not just a particular group of students) and also balanced out the group sexually them more accurate results. I realize that it may not be very particle but along with the verbal and written test they should have done more neuropsychological testing to rule out chance and lower scores due to the pressure of performing (test taking). In conclusion I believe that the case study was done very well I just believe