Celebrities have huge platforms that influence pop culture, making it easy for people to look up to them and watch their every move. However, when a person’s life revolves around a certain celebrity, like their personality or identity, they can be considered to have celebrity worship syndrome. According to Psych Central, this is a type of parasocial relationship, a one-sided relationship, when looking up to a celebrity turns into an obsessive fascination type of mentality. This condition is described to be an obsessive-addictive disorder, where there is a pattern showing obsessive, compulsive, and addictive behaviors.

According to the National Library of Medicine, there are three dimensions of celebrity-worship. The first dimension is a low level of celebrity-worship or entertainment-social dimension, like having a healthy amount of reading. This dimension is linked with extraversion, a trait of the five-factor model that describes extraversion as people who are social and draw energy from their surroundings. The second dimension is an intense-personal dimension where the person has intense or compulsive behavior towards a certain celebrity. This stage has been found to be associated with neuroticism, symptoms of depression and anxiety, and more. The final dimension is the borderline-pathological dimension, where a person demonstrates extreme attitudes and behaviors towards a person. These attitudes or behaviors are usually maladaptive, actions that interfere with a person’s daily life or ability to adjust, and are linked with narcissism, psychoticism, and are prone to criminal activities or addictions.

While this syndrome is not completely negative, how it affects a person’s life depends on how intense their condition is. While there is no known cause of this condition, people with anxious-ambivalent and avoidant attachment styles, narcissism, depression, and more are more likely to develop this syndrome. Avoidant attachment styles are the attitudes or patterns of behavior while interacting with people. A person's attachment style is shaped throughout their life by the early relationships they have with their parents or other caregivers. They may have a secure, anxious, avoidant, disorganized, or other attachment style, depending on how responsive and connected these caregivers were to them. People with an anxious-ambivalent style tend to be anxious and lack self-esteem, thus leading them to be overly needy. Those with avoidant attachment styles have a strong desire for independence as well as difficulty in trusting others and discomfort at emotional intimacy.

Depression and anxiety work together with these attachment styles, but narcissism plays against them. Narcissism is when a person believes that their importance is far greater than it is as well as constantly needing attention and wanting people to admire them. This can be seen in celebrity worship syndrome if a person gets cosmetic surgery done to look like a celebrity everyone admires thus bringing attention to themselves by having people say that they look like a certain celebrity. This is also considered to be maladaptive because by getting this surgery done, it could affect a person’s daily life.

However, as said earlier, this syndrome is not completely negative. According to Lynn Zubernis, a psychologist at West Chester University, she says that humans are hardwired to want connections with others, and this is the reason why we become connected with celebrities. Zubernis says "We form attachments to celebrities… because our brains are not really very good at telling the difference between someone who is in our home every day and someone who is on our screen every day,” to explain why we develop attachments to celebrities even when we don't know them. Celebrities also evoke an emotional response in people that leads to a habit that Zubernis refers to as "proximity seeking," which originates from human's evolutionary past. According to her, "That’s why people pay a lot of money to go to a Taylor Swift concert. They want to be in the front.” People want Taylor Swift to look at them, “because that’s what we want from our attachment figures,” Zubernis says. According to Zubernis's research, fans typically have happier lives, lower stress levels, and higher self-esteem. She claims that's because social interaction, whether it's with celebrities or other fans, benefits our brains. She continues, by saying that fan communities give people a sense of safety and belonging, which are all qualities that evolution promotes.

This highlights the more positive side of the celebrity worship syndrome but like everything else in the world, things must be done in moderation. A great example that showcases this celebrity worship syndrome is Swifties as well as Taylor Swift impersonators. They’re known for being crazy, die-hard fans who will praise her to no end and let her lifestyle dictate their own. Even MeatCanyon, a YouTube channel that animates celebrities in an unflattering way, showed the celebrity worship syndrome in Swifties by not only giving them a hive mentality but also highlighting how they listen to whatever Taylor told them to do. People easily connect to Taylor’s music leading them to feel like they know a part of Taylor and vice versa. Thus, they begin to worship Taylor and her music because she not only feels like a friend but also, speaks into people’s minds. Furthermore, almost all celebrities will have impersonators. The most famous one is Ashley Leechin, who has gone viral for her likeness to the actual celebrity. Looking through her videos, before she received attention she had her own identity, style, and personality, but after being compared to Swift she slowly changed everything about herself to become more like Taylor. Overall, celebrity worship can be scary if taken to the extreme, but a small amount is not harmful and can in fact be beneficial to the fan. 

Bibliography: 

1. Gillette, Hope. “What to Know about Celebrity Worship Syndrome.” Psych Central, Psych Central, 9 Mar. 2022, psychcentral.com/blog/the-psychology-of-celebrity-worship#signs-and-symptoms. 

2. Zsila, Ágnes, et al. “The Association of Celebrity Worship with Problematic Internet Use, Maladaptive Daydreaming, and Desire for Fame.” Journal of Behavioral Addictions, U.S. National Library of Medicine, 1 Sept. 2018, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6426373/. 

3. Mendelsohn, Kohava. “Why so Many of Us Love Taylor Swift.” Scienceline, 5 Feb. 2024, scienceline.org/2024/02/why-love-taylor-swift/.