DATE: October 5, 2026 at 06:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG
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TITLE: Celebrity admiration is linked to submission to authority, study finds
URL: https://www.psypost.org/celebrity-admiration-is-linked-to-submission-to-authority-study-finds/
People who strongly admire celebrities tend to be more deferential to authority and more attached to traditional norms, according to new research published in Psychological Reports. The findings suggest that strong emotional attachments to famous figures relate to a preference for established social order and conventional norms, even after accounting for a person’s general political orientation.
People often form one-sided emotional connections with famous actors, musicians, and social media influencers. While these parasocial relationships are common and can sometimes provide a sense of community, intense celebrity admiration involves spending excessive time and effort focusing on a favorite public figure. This level of absorption is sometimes linked to negative outcomes. For instance, a 2021 study covered by PsyPost indicated that higher obsession with celebrities was associated with lower performance on tests of vocabulary and fluid intelligence.
The idea that celebrity admiration might be tied to authoritarianism is not new. Researchers proposed in 2001 that people inclined to defer to authority might gravitate toward celebrities, who are often treated as authorities on a range of topics, but their study of British participants found no association between the two.
Since then, the understanding of authoritarianism has shifted. The authors of a 2010 paper argued that right-wing authoritarianism is better understood as three related but distinct sets of attitudes: authoritarianism (which involves aggression and strict control), conservatism (which focuses on submission to authority and preserving the status quo), and traditionalism (which centers on adhering to old-fashioned lifestyles and morality).
Nearly 25 years after that first study, and amid shifts in celebrity culture and politics, the researchers sought to test which specific dimensions of authoritarianism are actually associated with celebrity admiration, especially once general political ideology and demographic factors are taken into account. The team was led by Ho Huynh, a senior lecturer in the School of Medicine and Psychology at the Australian National University.
“We know that celebrities have undue influence over people and that celebrities typically endorse liberal-leaning causes (e.g., climate change, immigration, abortion),” Huynh told PsyPost. “We were surprised to learn through our previous work that people who admire celebrities tend to self-identify as more politically conservative.”
“In the current work, we wanted to see if celebrity admiration would extend to right-wing authoritarianism,” Huynh continued. “This work might help to explain the contradiction of why politically conservative people in the United States might be more attracted to celebrities despite the stereotype that celebrities tend to hold liberal views.”
To investigate this, the researchers recruited 331 adults living in the United States through the online crowdsourcing platform Prolific. The sample was deliberately balanced during recruitment to contain an equal mix of self-identified liberals, moderates, and conservatives, meaning it is not nationally representative. About 54 percent of the participants were women, and all were 18 or older, with an average age of about 40.
Participants completed the brief seven-item version of the Celebrity Attitude Scale, a questionnaire that asks people to indicate their agreement with statements about their favorite famous person. This scale measures two levels of admiration. The first is a lighter, entertainment-social level, which includes enjoying keeping up with news about the celebrity or discussing them with friends. The second is a more intense, pathological level, characterized by feelings that the celebrity is a soulmate or that the fan shares a special, indescribable bond with them.
The participants also completed a survey assessing the three dimensions of right-wing authoritarianism. For example, participants rated their agreement with statements like “Obedience and respect for authority are the most important virtues children should learn.” Finally, they provided demographic information, including their education level, socioeconomic status, and their overall political orientation on an 11-point scale ranging from completely liberal to completely conservative.
The initial results showed that both forms of celebrity admiration were linked to higher scores on all three dimensions of authoritarianism. The links were strongest for conservatism (correlations of 0.32 for the lighter form and 0.45 for the intense form, on a scale where 0 means no relationship), moderate for traditionalism (0.19 and 0.32), and weak for authoritarian aggression (0.15 and 0.13). Only the intense form was linked to political conservatism, and modestly so (a correlation of 0.19).
To see if these links held up under closer statistical scrutiny, the researchers ran a series of models that controlled for the participants’ age, gender, education, socioeconomic status, and general political orientation. This step helped rule out the possibility that the connection simply reflected factors like political conservatism, which was linked to authoritarian attitudes and to intense admiration.
After accounting for these factors, celebrity admiration consistently predicted right-wing conservatism and right-wing traditionalism. Demographics and political orientation explained about 24 percent of the variation in conservatism scores; celebrity admiration added 9 percent (lighter form) or 13 percent (intense form) on top of that. For traditionalism, it added only about 2 to 4 percent.
“The association between celebrity admiration and authoritarian submission seems to be robust and reliable, indicating that people who worship their favorite celebrity tend to prefer more dominant authorities,” Huynh explained. Asked what the average person should take away, he said: “People who report admiring their favorite celebrity are more likely to submit to authority and prefer traditional norms. These trends might help explain why people who admire celebrities may self-identify as more politically conservative.”
However, the relationship between celebrity admiration and the third dimension, authoritarianism (the demand for strict punishment of rule-breakers), did not remain robust. Once demographics and political orientation were factored in, intense admiration no longer predicted authoritarian aggression. The lighter form remained a statistically detectable predictor, but it accounted for only about 1 percent of the variation, and the authors do not consider this strong evidence of a link. The authors suggest this may be because people who heavily admire celebrities tend to see the world as fair, with people getting what they deserve, and so may feel less need to support harsh punishment for rule-breakers.
Huynh sees this boundary as an encouraging sign. “Celebrity admiration was not related to authoritarian aggression, which involves strictness and social control,” he noted. “This finding showed the limits of celebrity admiration, which is positive and worthy of optimism.”
As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind. The study measured these traits at a single point in time, so the direction of the relationship is unknown. Intense absorption in celebrity culture might lead someone to adopt more authority-respecting and traditional views, or people who already hold such views might be more drawn to celebrity culture. When the researchers flipped their statistical model, higher authority-submission scores also predicted more celebrity admiration, a pattern consistent with either direction.
The list of control variables was also limited, missing related traits like narcissism and a preference for social hierarchies. Additionally, the survey asked participants to focus on their favorite celebrity but did not distinguish between typical entertainers and political figures. Because modern politics has become heavily focused on personalities, admiring a politician might function differently than admiring a musician or actor.
“This research was not about political celebrities, but celebrities generally,” Huynh said. “Some people may want to view these findings through the Trump presidencies, but only 5 out of 331 people in the study listed Donald Trump as their favorite celebrity. As such, these findings represent the associations between celebrity admiration and endorsement of different aspects of right-wing authoritarianism more broadly.”
Finally, the study only included participants from the United States. Cultural values, political structures, and the nature of fame vary widely around the world, so these connections might operate differently in other countries.
Huynh suggested another direction for future work. “An interesting next step would be to examine the associations between celebrity admiration and left-wing authoritarianism (e.g., hostility toward people in power, support for censoring opposing views, and rejection of traditional values and norms),” he said.
The study, “Idols and Ideologies: Examining Associations Between Celebrity Admiration and Right-Wing Authoritarianism,” was authored by Ho Phi Huynh, Joshua L. Williams, Marla F. Jorgensen, Amy Dicke-Bohmann, and Lynn McCutcheon.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/celebrity-admiration-is-linked-to-submission-to-authority-study-finds/
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