Celebrity Worship: Critiquing a Construct

McCutcheon, Lange, & Houran (2002) proposed the Celebrity Attitude Scale (CAS) to identify celebrity worshipers, useful for identifying individuals who are overly absorbed or addicted to their interest in a celebrity. Problematic is the absence of a conceptual definition for celebrity worshiper...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of applied social psychology 2011-06, Vol.41 (6), p.1356-1370
Main Author: STEVER, GAYLE S.
Format: Article
Language:English
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Summary:McCutcheon, Lange, & Houran (2002) proposed the Celebrity Attitude Scale (CAS) to identify celebrity worshipers, useful for identifying individuals who are overly absorbed or addicted to their interest in a celebrity. Problematic is the absence of a conceptual definition for celebrity worshiper and how this term relates to use of the term fan. Currently, these terms are most often used as if they were synonyms (Haspel, 2006; Maltby, Day, McCutcheon, Gillett et al., 2004; McCutcheon, Lange, & Houran, 2002). Sampled groups of serious fans contained many individuals who met none of the criteria for celebrity worship, as identified by the CAS. The use of celebrity worshiper as a synonym for fan appears to be conceptually flawed.
ISSN:0021-9029
1559-1816
DOI:10.1111/j.1559-1816.2011.00765.x