Celebrity Fandom and Mental Health: A New Look

The study checked a short tool that measures how much people admire celebrities. It tested this tool on 367 college students, most of whom were women, in the United States. Researchers also asked about how much worry people feel for others, their levels of depression, anxiety, and stress, and whether they had tough moments in childhood. Results showed that people who felt a lot of care for others or who were more mentally upset tended to admire celebrities more. This was true whether the admiration felt healthy or extreme. In a deeper analysis, strong mental distress linked closely to intense celebrity worship.Childhood hardships had mixed effects. On one hand, they could lead indirectly to stronger celebrity admiration through increased distress. On the other hand, a direct link was weak and even slightly negative. This suggests that childhood experiences influence celebrity admiration in complex ways. Overall, the short questionnaire proved useful for measuring celebrity admiration among American students and highlighted how mental health and early life events connect to this interest.