Celebrity Fandom

 From: http://wapedia.mobi/en/Celebrity_Worship_Syndrome

Celebrity Worship Syndrome is an obsessive-addictive disorder in which a person becomes overly involved with the details of a celebrity's personal life.

1. Objects of affection

Psychologists have indicated that though many people obsess over glamorous film, television, sport and pop stars, others have unlikely icons such as politicians or authors. The only common factor between them is that they are all figures in the public eye (i.e., celebrities). The term Celebrity Worship Syndrome is in fact a misnomer.

The term celebrity worship syndrome (CWS) first appeared in an article 'Do you worship the celebs?' by James Chapman in the Daily Mail in 2003 (Chapman, 2003). James Chapman was basing his article on the journal paper Maltby et al. (2003). James Chapman refers to CWS, but in fact this is a misunderstanding of a term used in the academic article to which he refers (Maltby et al. 2003), CWS which stood for Celebrity Worship Scale. Nonetheless Chapman may be generally correct. A syndrome refers to a set of abnormal or unusual set of symptoms indicating the existence of an undesirable condition or quality. Indeed many attitudes and behaviours covered in this research indicate such states.

2. Three types of CWS

Psychologists in the U.S.A. and UK. created a celebrity worship scale to rate the problems. In 2002, United States psychologists Lynn McCutcheon, Rense Lange, and James Houran introduced the Celebrity Attitude Scale, a 34 item scales administered to 262 persons living in central Florida. ^[2] McCutcheon et al. suggested that celebrity worship comprised one dimension in which lower scores on the scale involved individualistic behavior such as watching, listening to, reading and learning about celebrities whilst the higher levels of worship are characterized by empathy, over-identification, and obsession with the celebrity.

However, later research among larger U.K. samples have suggested there are 3 different aspects to celebrity worship; ^[3] Maltby, and the aforementioned psychologists examined the Celebrity Attitude Scale among 1732 United Kingdom respondents (781 males, 942 females) who were aged between 14 and 62 years and found the following 3 dimensions to celebrity worship:

2. 1. Entertainment-social

This dimension comprises attitudes that fans are attracted to a favorite celebrity because of their perceived ability to entertain and become a social focus such as “I love to talk with others who admire my favorite celebrity” and “I like watching…