An investigation of demographic correlates of the Celebrity Attitude Scale

Abstract

The Celebrity Attitude Scale (CAS) has been widely used in the last 15 years, but little is known about how ethnicity and socioeconomic status relate to scores on this scale. In the first of two studies, we showed that a sample of African-American college students had more favorable attitudes toward their favorite celebrities than a sample of White college students. However, there was no control for the possibility that the two samples were unequal with respect to socioeconomic status. The second study controlled for that possibility, and added samples of Hispanic and Asian college students. Results showed that African-American participants again had more favorable attitudes toward their favorite celebrities than Whites did, with Hispanic and Asian-American participants falling in between the two extremes. Socioeconomic status was unrelated to CAS scores. African-Americans tended to select African-American celebrities as their favorites, and Whites tended to choose Whites, with Hispanic and Asian-Americans showing no ethnic preferences. Strength of identification with one’s ethnic group was unrelated to ethnic concordance in choosing a favorite celebrity, but strength of identification with one’s ethnic group decreased as favorable attitudes toward one’s favorite celebrity increased. We discussed why African-American participants might report more attachment to their favorite celebrities than White participants.

Stacking Up With the Stars: Relative Deprivation and Excessive Admiration of Celebrities

“…A major purpose of the present study was to determine whether personal relative deprivation is related to celebrity admiration. In a previous study, an objective measure of SES did not correlate significantly with celebrity attitudes (highest coefficient = .06; McCutcheon et al., 2016). The authors of that study suggested that a measure of personal relative deprivation might yield a different result.…”

“…Despite the similarities in the profiles of celebrity worshippers and those high in personal relative deprivation, there are no previous studies that have attempted to determine the relationship between these two variables. There is one study that found no relationship between celebrity admiration and SES (McCutcheon, Aruguete, Jenkins, McCarley, & Yockey, 2016). However, as noted above, feelings of relative deprivation are not necessarily limited to those of low socioeconomic background, and low SES does not guarantee that a person will feel relatively deprived.…”

FANatics: Systematic literature review of factors associated with celebrity worship, and suggested directions for future research

“…As discussed, McCutcheon et al (2016d found that non-white participants tended to be more likely to engage in CW. The authors proposed that escapism into the world of celebrities may help people escape the potentially unpleasant reality of being a minority group, and that minority groups may derive a sense of self-esteem from strong identification with a celebrity belonging to the same group.…”

“…Other Maltby et al (2004a) found no significant relationship between CW and education, employment or marital status; Maltby et al (2006) found no association between CW and education. McCutcheon et al (2016d) found that socioeconomic status was unrelated to CAS scores. However, Cheung and Yue (2012) found that idolisation of celebrities in adolescents was associated with lower parental socioeconomic status.…”

The interpersonal beginnings of fandom: The relation between attachment style, trust, and the admiration of celebrities

“…Furthermore, Hispanics were underrepresented in our sample. Although we did not hypothesize any difference as a function of ethnicity, previous research shows that Hispanics tend to score in between Black and White people on the CAS (McCutcheon, Aruguete, Jenkins, McCarley, & Yockey, 2016). A larger, more representative sample would have allowed us to further explore such differences in an exploratory fashion.…”