Intimate relationships and attitudes toward celebrities

Lynn E Mccutcheon,Brian Collisson,Michael P Murtagh,Blaine L Browne,Meghan M Gillen

doi:10.5964/ijpr.v10i1.208

Abstract

Previous research indicates that persons who self-report a high level of preoccupation with celebrities tend to have lower levels of well-being. We administered the “Romantic Partner Conflict Scale”, the “Love Attitudes Scale”, the soulmate subscale from the “Relationship Theories Questionnaire”, and the anxiety subscale from the “Experiences in Close Relationships Scale” to 330 students from four universities to see how well scores on these measures would predict scores on each of the three subscales from the “Celebrity Attitude Scale” (CAS). We predicted that persons whose scores on these measures of intimate relationships indicated a troubled, anxious, or poor quality relationship would have higher scores on the CAS, especially on its two problematic subscales. In three multiple regressions, specific measures of behavior during conflict with a romantic partner and certain love styles significantly predicted scores on all three of the CAS subscales. We discuss the implications of being a celebrity worshiper on one’s relationship with an intimate partner.

Highlights

Previous research indicates that persons who self-report a high level of preoccupation with celebrities tend to have lower levels of well-being
In the last decade there has been a proliferation of research on persons who are enthralled with celebrities – persons who have been termed “celebrity worshipers.”
The main purpose of the present study is to explore the possibility that celebrity worshipers tend to have troubled intimate relationships

Summary

Introduction

Previous research indicates that persons who self-report a high level of preoccupation with celebrities tend to have lower levels of well-being. One empirical approach to the study of attitudes about celebrities has spawned the Absorption-Addiction Model (McCutcheon, Maltby, Houran, & Ashe, 2004) According to this model, which is based on the psychometric foundations of the Celebrity Attitude Scale (McCutcheon, Lange, & Houran, 2002), most of the persons who show a strong attraction to a favorite celebrity begin because they find “their” celebrity to be very entertaining and because the activities of that celebrity provide the basis for social interaction with like-minded persons. The link between the two problematic levels of celebrity worship and a variety of troubling attitudes and behaviors seems to be well documented, none of the above-mentioned studies targeted intimate romantic relationships

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion