The Relationship between Attitudes toward Celebrities & the Five Factor Personality Inventory at an Elite Indian University: A Brief Report (original) (raw)

Abstract

For nearly a decade and a half there has been a large amount of research on persons who are enthralled with celebrities--persons who have been termed "celebrity worshippers." Prior to 2001 progress in the study of celebrity worshipers was hindered by the lack of a reliable and valid measure of attitudes toward celebrities. Development of the Celebrity Attitude Scale (CAS) led to considerable progress in the effort to understand celebrity worshipers. More than 40 studies have been published on this topic, and much has been learned about those who have a very strong attraction to celebrities. Research with the CAS in the United States (McCutcheon, Maltby, Houran & Ashe, 2004), the Philippines (Tengco-Pacquing, Cayubit, Reyes, Agnes, & McCutcheon, 2014; Vega, et al., 2013), Jamaica and Barbados (McCutcheon, Wong, Black, Maynard, Frey, & Rich, 2014) and in the UK (Maltby, McCutcheon, Ashe, & Houran, 2001) suggests that this scale can be used to reflect distinctions among three levels of celebrity worship, Entertainment/Social, Intense/Personal, and Borderline Pathological. Furthermore, a study conducted in Malaysia revealed a three-factor solution of the CAS that was consistent with previous studies done in the Western Hemisphere (Swami, Chamorro-Premuzic, Mastor, Siran, Said, Jaafar, Sinniah, & Pillai, 2010). However, to our knowledge no one has collected data using the CAS in India, one of the largest and most populated countries in the world. Thus, one of the goals of the present study is to determine how students at an elite university in India perceive their favorite celebrities and to compare their views indirectly with persons from other countries where CAS data exist. A byproduct of research with the CAS is a theoretical model that attempts to explain how one can become increasingly involved with a celebrity. Briefly, the model, based partly on Rasch scaling and partly on factor analysis (McCutcheon, et al., 2004), holds that persons become attached to their favorite celebrity largely because that celebrity provides entertainment and social value. That is, the worshipper admires the celebrity for his or her talent as an entertainer, and because the celebrity's performances can be discussed with like-minded friends. This first level is relatively benign, but a few persons move to a second level by becoming intensely involved with the personal lives of their favorite celebrity, and a few of these individuals eventually become so obsessed with details of their celebrity's life that support for their celebrity borders on the pathological. These level three worshippers are more likely to endorse irresponsible attitudes and behaviors than those who are on levels one or two (McCutcheon, Wong, Black, Maynard, Frey & Rich, 2014), and are willing to admit that they would break laws on behalf of their favorite celebrity (McCutcheon, Lange, & Houran, 2002; McCutcheon, et al., 2004). The science of psychology has long debated about how to best measure personality and what the most important dimensions of personality might be. By the 1990s, what emerged was a general agreement that there were five major dimensions known as the Big Five (Goldberg, 1990). This five-factor model of personality consists of Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness (Costa & McRae, 1992). We wished to measure the relationship between scores on the Big Five and scores on the three levels of celebrity worship. Based on a similar study done in England we predicted that the Big Five factor of Extraversion would correlate positively with the first level of celebrity worship, which we called Entertainment Social; further, we predicted that Big Five neuroticism would correlate positively with the second level of celebrity worship, called Intense Personal (Maltby, McCutcheon, & Lowinger, 2011). METHOD Participants Our sample consisted of 61 students (45 females, 15 males, and 1 no response), from one elite university in India, ranging in age from 17 to 20 years, M = 18. …