The psychology of celebrity and fandom



The psychology of celebrity and fandom

The attraction of celebrity

Social psychological explanations

Familiarity and physical attractiveness

Psychological attraction occurs through repeated exposure and beauty as a positive central trait of impression formation.

Physical attraction

Landy and Sigall (1974) found that male participants rated essays thought to be written by a more attractive woman more highly.

Dion (1972)

Walster and Berscheid's 'computer dance' experiment

Arranged a ‘computer dance’ for 376 male and female students. Before the dance they were all asked to fill in a personality questionnaire, ostensibly for use in pairing, in fact the pairing was done randomly and the questionnaire used to provide data about similarity. Later the participants were asked to rate their date.

They found the most important factor in determining whether a woman would be asked for a second date was her physical attractiveness, regardless of the man’s.

Exposure and Familiarity

Zajonc

Zajonc et al (1971) asked participants to evaluate photos of strangers and found that those strangers who appeared more often than others were rated more positively. This effect has also been found for repeated exposure of music paintings, and political candidates.

Segal (1974) studied police cadets who were assigned to their rooms and classroom seats alphabetically, and found that they were more likely to rate someone as a friend who was close in the alphabet to them.

Heider’s balance theory

Liking for celebrities may be a simple matter of maintaining cognitive consistency because we like their music, acting, fashion, view etc.

Heider (1958) proposes Balance Theory as a simple system for describing the way our environment is perceived by us. He says a person's environment is made up of entities (people, ideas and events), and relations between these entities. Balance theory deals with three kinds of entities. The person (P) whose subjective environment we are concerned with, another person (O); and the object (X), which may be a third person.

Balance theory is concerned with how relations between the three entities, POX, are organised in terms of the person's (P's) cognitive structure. Balance theory proposes that with three entities, person-another person-object (POX), three sets of relations exist i.e. Between P and O; between P and X and; between O and X

Each of the three relations, P-O, P-X and O-X, can have one of two values. You can either 'like' (+) or 'dislike' (-). With three sets of possible relationships, each taking on one of two values (+/-) eight possible states of affairs exists.

Here is a schematic of Heider's Balance Theory, which is represented by eight triads for three entities with positive or negative sentiment relations. The four triads on the left are balanced, the four on the right imbalanced. (Heider, 1958).

[pic]

Take the second triad on the left hand. This could be represented as follows.

A number of options are available to achieve this balance or cognitive consistency. Jim can stop being a vegetarian, and begin to like meat. He could try and persuade Sally to dislike eating meat, or more radically perhaps, Jim could abandon his relationship with Sally.

To predict which attitude is likely to change we would have to know more about the two people.

Rosenberg and Abelson (1960), maintain that attitude change occurs according to a principle of minimum effort, which states that the attitude that requires the least effort to change will be the one that changes. Or to put it more simply the one you feel is the least important to you. Balance theory is quite good with our intuitions about harmony and disharmony between people and the significant things in life.

Where it breaks down is when the object (X) is another person. Maybe this is why marriage guidance in a situation of an affair is such a struggle.

Why do you think this would be the case?

Top of Form

Bottom of Form

Social construction of celebrity roles

‘Celebrity’ is constructed by the mass media via advertising for economic gain – the celebrity ‘is well known for their well knowness’ (Boorstin 1961)

Social role identification

Celebrities are attractive and exert referent social power (people wish to be like and identify with them) because celebrities possess traits and abilities found in the ideal-selves of the audience, or symbolise their fans’ lifestyle aspirations of achievement and success (McCracken 1989)

Evolutionary psychology explanations

Physical attractiveness and status as fitness indicators –celebrities usually possess higher levels of both these indicators of reproductive success, confirmed by Buss’s (1989) cross-cultural data from 10000 respondents in 37 countries on the preferred characteristics of potential mates.

Talent and sexual selection – celebrities often come from sports or entertainment industries and so have the chance to show displays of skill that distinguish themselves from their same-sex competitors (e.g. Miller, 2000) in the eyes of potential mates.

Evaluation

Dimension of Fandom

McCutcheon et al (2005)

Developed the Celebrity Attitude Scale (CAS), on the basis of which three distinct dimensions of fandom have emerged, which vary in terms of the parasocial interaction between fans and celebrities ad the purpose they serve:

Entertainment-social: fans are attracted to a celebrity because they find him or her entertaining and a source of social interaction and gossip.

Intense-personal: there is a strongly personal aspect of attraction to a celebrity; a person may feel something bad happening to a celebrity as though he or she were experiencing it personally.

Borderline-pathological: this is characterised by obsessional behaviour and fantasies about the celebrities; people may imagine that they have a special relationship with the celebrity.

Research on intense fandom

Celebrity worship

Giles (2003

Jindra’s (1994) analysis of Star Trek fans’ behaviour argued that it showed enough criteria to be classed as a civil religion, including organisations, dogmas, recruitment systems, and religious rituals.

Frow (1998) analysis of fan worship as a ‘cult of the dead’ proposed that film star images become disembodied and worshipped once they are recorded on film.

Explanation of celebrity worship include:

Personality factors e.g. fantasy proneness, cognitive-deficits, low self-esteem, low levels of life control.

Self-concept over-identification – fans are often attracted to and identify with celebrities who possess traits and abilities found in their ideal-self. McCutcheon et al (2002) suggest celebrity worship is due to over-identification based on psychological absorption and addiction.

Companionship needs

Social identity Theory – celebrity worship for some may be reinforced by social group benefits of fan group membership, such as the rewarding social interaction of discussion forums or the acquisition of subcultural or countercultural identities.

Stalking

Stalking refers to the obsessive following of individuals (e.g. media figures) usually with unwanted attempts of physical contact and intrusion upon their lives, often leading to harassment, intimidation, or even physical assault.

Pakes and Winstone (2007) point out that although there have been many well-publicised cases of fans stalking celebrities, research indicates that stalking occurs relatively frequently to non-celebrities, often by ex-partners and acquaintances more than strangers, and that there are different types of stalkers and motives for their behaviour.

Explanations of stalking

Sheridan and Boon (2002) identified five types based on 124 cases of staling serious enough to warrant police involvement:

• Ex-partner harassment/stalking –

• Infatuation harassment

• Dangerous delusional fixation stalking –

• Less dangerous delusional fixation stalking –

• Sadistic stalking –

Meloy (1989) suggested staling arises from attachment pathology, a theory that could be supported by Dutton et al.’s (1994) finding that individuals with preoccupied and fearful attachments were more likely to show jealousy, following and surveillance behaviour.

Kienlan et al’s (1997) study of a small sample of imprisoned American stalkers found the majority had lost their primary caretaker in childhood and had a major loss (usually a personal relationship) in the six months prior to the onset of their stalking behaviour.

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