It's normal to have favorite actors, actresses and singers. But what happens when this simple preference takes over a person's life and transforms into something more obsessive and extreme, or what experts call 'Celebrity Worship Syndrome?'
Celebrity Worship Syndrome or CWS is "an obsessive-addictive disorder" of a person who's "overly involved and interested (in short, completely obsessed)" with a celebrity's personal life, according to Huffington Post. A person can be obsessed on any public figure but research and criminal prosecutions found that Celebrity Worship Syndrome often targets those who are in television, film and pop music.
Dr. John Maltby of the University of Leicester in England and his colleagues said that Celebrity Worship Syndrome exists.Maltby explained it has three separate dimensions: entertainment-social, intense-personal and borderline pathological.
The entertainment-social dimension involves people who are attracted to a celebrity because of their entertainment factor. These people and others like them tend to have their favorite celebrity as the focal point of their conversations.
The intense-personal dimension comprises people with severe and compulsive feelings about a certain actor or pop star. The borderline-pathological dimension, on the other hand, involves people who "display uncontrollable behaviors and fantasies relating to a celebrity," Huffington Post further reported.
Past studies found that worshipping celebrities both have positive and negative effects. Worshippers who do it for entertainment and social reasons tend to be more optimistic, happy and outgoing. People who worship celebrities for personal motives, on the other hand, are more likely to be obsessive, anxious, depressed, impulsive, solitary, anti-social and troublesome.
Low-level Celebrity Worship Syndrome is characterized by discussing and enjoying, let's say, Taylor Swift or Ariana Grande's latest music. For people with low-level CWS, reading about Swift's or Grande's life story is an incredibly fun activity.
A moderate case of Celebrity Worship Syndrome involves more intense feelings. A person with moderate CWS considers Jennifer Lawrence, for example, as their soul mate. They believe that they have a special bond with their favorite actress or singer and they usually have thoughts about the celebrity throughout the day.
Celebrity Worship Syndrome becomes obsessive and pathological when a girl, for instance, gets extremely upset upon learning that her favorite One Direction member -- say, Harry Styles -- got married. Another example is when a person is willing to spend plenty of money just to get an item that a celebrity used such as a napkin or a spoon or they are willing to do something illegal for their favorite movie star or singer.
Maltby said that people don't always view celebrities as role models, Psychology Today reported. Rather, people watch celebrities because society gave them hefty wealth and they want to make sure that they deserve it.
