Study finds that people who are obsessed with celebrities have lower intelligence

A new study has suggested that people who are celebrity-obsessed have lower cognitive performance.

In the world of reality stardom and influencer culture we live in today, it’s easy to become absorbed with the lives these celebrities lead.

But a study authored by Lynn E. McCutcheon, Ágnes Zsila, and Zsolt Demetrovics, found that higher levels of celebrity worship may indicate lower intelligence.

It was conducted on a group of 1,763 Hungarian adults who were asked to complete a digit symbol substitution test and a 30-word vocabulary test to assess their fluid intelligence.

Other information such as level of education, family income, material wealth and self-esteem was gathered.

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Participants were also asked to complete the Celebrity Attitude Scale questionnaire to measure their level of celebrity worship.

Within the questionnaire, they were posed statements such as, “I am obsessed by details of my favourite celebrity’s life” and asked to say how much they agreed or disagreed.

After adjustments were made for demographic and socioeconomic variables, the results were revealing.

The researchers found that high scores on the Celebrity Attitude Scale were associated with lower performance on both the digit symbol substitution test and a 30-word vocabulary test.

While researchers aren’t sure whether celebrity worship is a cause or outcome of lower cognitive performance, the authors explained what they found in their study.

They wrote: “We found a weak tendency for those who showed the strongest admiration for their favourite celebrity to have lower cognitive skills, suggesting that the earlier results were not due just to chance.”

Explaining how their study relates to other similar research, they explained: “Our results also support previous findings showing that excessive behaviours such as celebrity worshipping can possibly impair cognitive functioning, presumably due to the increased focus and energy invested in this behaviour that becomes dominant in the individual’s life.

“Although celebrity admiration seems not to be a strong precursor of poorer cognitive performance, high levels of admiration can be regarded as one contributing factor to lowered performance in tasks requiring cognitive effort, independently from education or age.”