Celebrity worship syndrome (CWS) is an obsessive-addictive disorder in which a person becomes overly involved with the details of a celebrity's personal life. Psychologists have indicated that though many people obsess over glamorous film, television, sport and pop stars, 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.
Psychologists in the United States and United Kingdom 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 scale administered to 262 persons living in central Florida. 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 UK samples have suggested there are 3 different aspects to celebrity worship; John Maltby (University of Leicester), 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: entertainment-social, intense-personal, and borderline-pathological.
Read more about Celebrity Worship Syndrome: Mental Health
Famous quotes containing the words celebrity, worship and/or syndrome:
“The celebrity is a person who is known for his well-knownness.”
—Daniel J. Boorstin (b. 1914)
“The art of government is the organization of idolatry. The bureaucracy consists of functionaries; the aristocracy, of idols; the democracy, of idolaters. The populace cannot understand the bureaucracy: it can only worship the national idols.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“Women are taught that their main goal in life is to serve others—first men, and later, children. This prescription leads to enormous problems, for it is supposed to be carried out as if women did not have needs of their own, as if one could serve others without simultaneously attending to one’s own interests and desires. Carried to its “perfection,” it produces the martyr syndrome or the smothering wife and mother.”
—Jean Baker Miller (20th century)