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The adaptational-continuum model of personality and coping suggests a useful context for research areas that emphasize both personality and coping. The present paper used Ferguson's (2001) model integrating personality and coping factors to further conceptualize findings around celebrity worship. Three hundred and seventy-two respondents completed measures of celebrity worship, personality, coping style, general health, stress, positive and negative affect and life satisfaction. Celebrity worship for intense-personal reasons is associated with poorer mental heath and this relationship can be understood within the dimensions of neuroticism and a coping style that suggests disengagement. Such findings suggest the utility of examining the relationship between celebrity worship and mental health within both personality and coping variables, which have practical implications for understanding and addressing mental health problems that may occur as the result of engaging in celebrity worship for intense-personal reasons.
Not only is there growing interest in celebrities in terms of fans and media coverage, but there is also growing evidence to suggest that celebrity worship may be of interest to psychologists. The phenomenon occurs more in adolescents or young adults than older persons (Ashe & McCutcheon, 2001; Giles, 2002; Larsen, 1995), celebrity worshippers are more likely to value a 'game-playing' love style (McCutcheon, Lange, & Houran, 2002), and celebrity worship shares a negative association with some aspects of religiosity (Maltby, Houran, Lange, Ashe, & McCutcheon, 2002). However, celebrity worship does not appear to be related to authoritarianism (Maltby & McCutcheon, 2001) and at best is only very weakly associated with shyness or loneliness (Ashe & McCutcheon, 2001).
McCutcheon et al. (2002) proposed an 'absorption-addiction' model to explain such cases of celebrity worship. According to this model, a compromised identity structure in some individuals facilitates psychological absorption with a celebrity in an attempt to establish an identity and a sense of fulfilment. The dynamics of the motivational forces driving this absorption might, in turn, take on an addictive component, leading to more extreme (and perhaps delusional) behaviours to sustain the individual's satisfaction with the parasocial relationship. Several studies based on the Celebrity Attitude Scale (Maltby, McCutcheon, Ashe, & Houran, 2001; Maltby et al., 2002; McCutcheon et al., 2002) are consistent with this proposed model and suggest that there are three increasingly extreme sets of attitudes and behaviours...