People Who Worship Celebrities Have Poor Cognitive Abilities, New Study Suggests

The cult of celebrity worship has no shortage of worshippers, but new research indicates that people who obsess over the lives of the rich and famous tend to achieve lower scores on cognitive tests. That is the assertion being made in a Hungarian study from November composed of research that spanned two decades.

In dissecting the relationship between "celebrity worship and cognitive skills," this particular study intended to test a large adult sample size.

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The research was conducted using a survey of 1,763 adults who completed a series of tasks, including a 30-word vocabulary test and a digit symbol substitution test. 

They also completed a “celebrity attitude scale” questionnaire created in order to establish how interested they were in famous people. The questionnaire required people to answer simply “yes” or “no” to a series of statements.

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These included: “I often feel compelled to learn the personal habits of my favorite celebrity”, “I am obsessed by details of my favorite celebrity’s life”, and “if I were lucky enough to meet my favorite celebrity, and he/she asked me to do something illegal as a favor I would probably do it.”

The researchers concluded that those who scored highest on the celebrity attitude scale also had lower performances on the two cognitive ability tests. However, they acknowledged they could not say whether an obsession with celebrity culture was a either a cause or a consequence of having lower cognitive abilities.

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Another hypothesis was that there would be a negative relationship between scores on the vocabulary and numeracy tests after taking gender, age, educational level, current family income, current and childhood material wealth, and self-esteem into account.

"Partial correlations confirmed the weak, negative relationship among celebrity worship and cognitive skills in all aspects except for the relationship between the vocabulary test and the Entertainment–Social dimension of celebrity worship, which was not significant," the study concluded.

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"It was found that the direct association between celebrity worship and poorer cognitive performance was weak but consistent, even after controlling for demographic and socioeconomic variables such as educational level and material wealth," the study noted.

"This result may suggest that deeper involvement with a celebrity may be directly associated with poorer performance in tasks requiring attention and focus, which may be explained by the cognitive effort put into maintaining the absorption and the one-sided emotional bond with an admired celebrity."

And although results align with previous findings on addictive behaviors, suggesting that excessive behaviors can impair cognitive functioning due to the increased focus and energy invested in admiring celebrities, more research needs to be done.

"The explanatory power of celebrity worship on lower cognitive performance was limited, suggesting that the admiration toward a celebrity is not a prominent predictor of poorer cognitive skills, although there is a consistent, weak relationship between the two constructs," the authors wrote. "Based upon this finding, celebrity worship can be regarded as one contributing factor that may alter cognitive performance beside—and independent from—education, age and material wealth, although other factors may be stronger predictors of cognitive performance."

Another theory is that the smarter you are the more likely you can spot the marketing machine behind the celebrity and see through it. The study is part of a long stretch of research that has been going on for more than two decades and yet there are still no answers.