Lynn McCutcheon

North American Journal of Psychology

The lack of reliability of scientific findings is sometimes ascribed as a reason for the replication crisis in psychology. One background reason that may explain this is the lack of stringent peer review and lax editorial standards of journals where such findings have been published. In extreme cases, such journals engage in predatory practices whe...

We administered measures of attitudes about life during the presidency of Donald Trump, gun beliefs, opinion of Donald Trump, and celebrity admiration to participants from two American universities and one college. The results revealed a relationship between celebrity admiration and gun beliefs. Results also revealed relationships among opinion of...

Celebrity worship refers to excessive admiration towards a favorite celebrity (McCutcheon et al., 2002). Admiration of celebrities has been intensively researched in the past two decades (Brooks, 2021). The Absorption-Addiction Model proposes a hierarchical model of celebrity worship ranging from healthy enthusiasm to excessive levels of admiration...

Building upon evidence supporting the co-occurrence of behavioural addictions, this study delved into the relationship between social media doomscrolling and celebrity worship among university student social media users in Iran and the United States. Objectives were threefold: (a) provide psychometric support for the Social Media Doomscrolling Scal...

Juvenile delinquents in India and their attitudes about their favorite celebrities.

The media's adherence to “if it bleeds, it leads” has resulted in global dominance of negative news (e.g., stories of corruption, fraud, shootings, terrorism, and war). The appetite for negative news is fueled by negativity bias, which compels people to prioritize negative over positive stories. This cross-cultural study, inspired by media effec...

Background A large body of evidence suggests that some people have a strong, obsessive attachment to a favorite celebrity. The absorption-addiction model attempts to account for this extreme attachment, sometimes labeled “celebrity worship.” According to the model, a small portion of celebrity admirers (“celebrity worshipers”) become absorbed in th...

Background and aims: Celebrity worship, defined as an excessive admiration towards celebrities, has generated considerable research and public interest. A widely used assessment instrument to measure celebrity worship is the 23-item Celebrity Attitude Scale. However, concerns have been raised regarding the measurement, including the inconsistent fa...

Juvenile delinquents in India

The primary purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between people’s tendency to worship celebrities and their inclination to stigmatize people with post-traumatic stress disorder. We administered measures of stigmatization directed toward people with PTSD, conservatism, and admiration for a favorite celebrity and celebrities in gener...

The stalking of celebrities is a serious issue for thousands of celebrities worldwide who are occasionally confronted by fans who merit the label “fanatic.” We administered measures of obnoxious celebrity stalking, celebrity worship, persistent pursuit of celebrities, threat directed toward celebrities, boredom susceptibility, disinhibition, experi...

The purpose of the present study was to perform an extension of research by Krems et al. (2021) on gendered stereotypes of sexual behavior. Across six experiments with U.S. participants, Krems et al., (2021) found that participants judged women engaging in casual sex to have lower self-esteem than women having sex in the context of committed relati...

We administered the Realness Scale (RS), Celebrity Attitude Scale (CAS), and the modified Authentic Living Subscale (ALS) from the Authenticity Scale (AS) to undergraduate students from four American institutions of higher learning. We sought to further validate the RS by showing that it correlated positively with the ALS and negatively with the CA...

Interest in celebrities and their impact on those who are strongly attracted to them has been growing for several decades. The present study was designed to shed light on relationships between attraction to a favorite celebrity (celebrity worship) and maladaptive daydreaming, engagement seeking, and body appreciation. Measures of each were administ...

The Celebrity Attitude Scale (CAS) was administered to 215 participants from the United States through Mechanical Turk along with questions relating to gender, age, and marital status. Results indicate that attraction to one’s favorite celebrity declined slightly with age, and participants who chose a favorite celebrity of the opposite gender did n...

The Celebrity Attitude Scale (CAS) and a similar measure were administered to 400 university students from Iran. Results showed a significant relationship, further validating the CAS in a different culture.

Background Almost two decades of research produced mixed findings on the relationship between celebrity worship and cognitive skills. Several studies demonstrated that cognitive performance slightly decreases with higher levels of celebrity worship, while other studies found no association between these constructs. This study has two aims: (1) to e...

Attitudes toward the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender communities have become an important societal issue. Numerous events and movements support the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) community, but homonegativity remains prominent in the Philippines. This study describes the attitudes of heterosexual Filipinos toward les...

Filipinos have been using social media platforms to connect, interact, and get news about celebrities. Previous studies have shown that persons who are strongly attracted to a favorite celebrity were more likely to be addicted to social media. The present study was an attempt to replicate those findings with a total of 508 Filipino adolescents, a...

The present study is a conceptual replication of the functional alternative hypothesis, which states that when it is difficult for some persons to form satisfactory interpersonal relationships they turn to parasocial relationships as a functional alternative. In this study, the Celebrity Attitude Scale (CAS), a one-item measure of interest in celeb...

Evidence was found that perceived similarity with a famous person in gender, age, cultural background and attitudes increases the attraction towards this celebrity. Previous studies have also revealed that sexual minority individuals and those with a sexual attraction towards a famous person of the opposite gender are more likely to become obsessed...

Pandemic illnesses such as COVID-19 can provoke negative emotions, including anxiety and depression, in addition to compulsive behaviors. Clarifying the psychosocial antecedents and consequences of COVID-19 anxiety can inform successful psychological support and treatment. This study investigated psychological predictors and consequences of COVID-1...

The association of celebrity worship with mental health concerns has been extensively studied in the past two decades. However, there is a lack of research on basic demographic characteristics that can potentially alter the link between celebrity admiration and different aspects of mental health. The present study investigates the possible moderati...

Objective: Cognitive-behavioral interventions can be effective for relieving anxiety associated with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), but complications such as social distancing, quarantine, a shortage of experts, and delayed care provisions have made it difficult to access face-to-face therapeutic interventions. The purpose of this study was...

Information about celebrities has steadily increased over time and is currently available every day in multiple venues. Our study examines whether extreme interest in celebrities has increased over the past 20 years. The Celebrity Attitude Scale appeared in its 23-item iteration in 2001 and has been used extensively since then, making it possible t...

We administered a Celebrity Dream Scale, selected items adapted from Schredl’s Dream Questionnaire (MADRE), and the Celebrity Attitude Scale (CAS) to university students from the United States and Iran in order to determine similarities and differences. We predicted and found a gender difference in the reporting of dreams in the U.S. sample, but no...

Americans greatly underestimate the wealth gap between Black and White citizens. We examined estimations of racial economic equality in the United States (US) and tested whether exposure to Black celebrities increased perceptions of economic equality. Participants (N = 323; 160 White, 153 Black) were assigned to view photos of Black or White celebr...

Recently, psychoactive substance use and suicidal behaviors have become general themes in popular culture, raising concerns that celebrity admirers may have become more affected in such health-risk behaviors. This study aimed to provide a more nuanced understanding of the role of celebrity worship in psychoactive substance use and self-harming beha...

Concern about the COVID-19 pandemic is driving an increase in media consumption. While media sources such as the Internet can be substantial repositories of health information during epidemic diseases, they may also have negative psychological consequences, such as increasing anxiety. It is imperative to determine what effect Internet sources have...

Vaccinations and anti-vaccination attitudes have reclaimed the spotlight as a crucial health behavior because of the recent surge in outbreaks of preventable diseases. One factor that may be contributing to this trend is the outspoken role that anti-vaccination celebrities play. The main purpose of the present study was to determine whether anti-va...

In universities across the USA, the inclusion or exclusion of classroom “trigger warnings,” prior warning regarding sensitive topics and their necessity, is an ongoing debate amongst faculty. In a previous study, these “trigger warnings” were viewed favorably by college students regarding potentially disturbing content. The current study aims to ex...

Building on the findings of Morewedge and Norton (2009) we hypothesized and found that our 157 college participants selected the Freudian interpretation of dreams over three other interpretations as the one most likely to be true. We also hypothesized that participants randomly assigned to read a brief script of a positive-, compared to a negative-...

Many undergraduate students of sport sciences are interested in sport celebrities with ideal physical features. In this regard, sport celebrities can influence eating patterns and body image of undergraduate students of sport sciences. The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationships among celebrity worship, avoidance of forbidden foods, a...

Social media has opened an avenue for reciprocal interactions between celebrities and their fans, encouraging individuals with a tendency to become obsessed with celebrities to extend their online social network with celebrity friends. Celebrity worship has been associated with weak social skills and addictive behaviors (e.g., problematic Internet...

Previous research on the false consensus of celebrity popularity was limited because it neither assessed actual popularity of celebrities nor compared people’s estimates of celebrity popularity to reality. We address this limitation and extend previous research by examining the false consensus of celebrity popularity. We had participants complete t...

This study had two goals. The first goal was to compare scores on the Celebrity Attitude Scale (CAS) and values of college students in Iran and the United States on how they differ in their admiration for their favorite celebrities. The second goal was to examine additional psychometric data on the Twenty Item Values Inventory (TWIVI). We administe...

This study examines whether the admiration of celebrities is the same or different from admiration of other persons. The Multidimensional Admiration Scale, Rubin’s Liking Scale, and the Celebrity Attitude Scale were administered to 190 participants from four American universities. Participants were randomly assigned to fill out either the “most adm...

Celebrity worship, defined as an excessive preoccupation with a famous media figure, has been of considerable research interest in the past two decades. There is growing evidence for the association between psychiatric symptoms (e.g., depression, anxiety, dissociative experiences) and celebrity worship. However, research on possible mediators that...

The main purpose of this study was to examine the association between environmental knowledge, environmental attitudes, and attraction to celebrities among a sample of 185 English-speaking community-based adults obtained through Mechanical Turk. A secondary purpose of the study was to validate measures of environmental attitudes and environmental k...

The main purpose of this study was to examine the association between interest in nature and attraction to the mass media. We measured environmental knowledge, environmental attitudes, and attraction to celebrities among a sample of 185 English-speaking community-based adults obtained through Mechanical Turk. A secondary purpose of the study was to...

A pattern of research findings indicates that excessive devotion to a favorite celebrity is linked to attitudes and behaviors that are psychologically unhealthy and may predict low life satisfaction. This study examines whether four common measures of life satisfaction (i.e., curiosity, meaning in life, gratitude, and flexibility) predict admiratio...

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether celebrity admiration is associated with personal relative deprivation, impulsivity, and materialism. We gave the Celebrity Attitude Scale, the Personal Relative Deprivation Scale, the MacArthur Scale of Subjective Social Status, a subscale from the Consideration of Future Consequences-14, and the...

The problems one has doing research at a community college where few people do research or care about doing it.

Groups of Black and White college students were compared on attitudes toward population control. Blacks were less likely to perceive it favorably, and more likely to perceive it as a means to racial genocide. Both groups overwhelmingly tended to perceive the problem abstractly, but Blacks even more so.

Aromatherapy has little or no validity.

The article concludes that Essiac has no value as a treatment for cancer.

This study compared the quality of survey data collected from Mechanical Turk (MTurk) workers and college students. Three groups of participants completed the same survey. MTurk respondents completed the survey as paid workers using the Mechanical Turk crowdsourcing platform. Student Online respondents also completed the survey online after having...

Past research suggests that gambling addiction and celebrity addiction may share common features. A survey containing two measures of gambling addiction and two measures of celebrity addiction were administered to 182 adult participants from the United States recruited through Mechanical Turk to determine the nature of the relationships among these...

Background and aims: Celebrity worship, defined as an obsessive fascination with a famous person, has been associated with several mental health problems, such as symptoms of depression and anxiety, dissociation, and body image concerns. The aim of this study was to extend the scope of investigation of previous research on psychological correlates...

The present survey study (n = 208) examined whether young adults who experience social and/or emotional connections to a favorite celebrity (Celebrity Attitude Scale, CAS; McCutcheon, Lange, & Houran, 2002) also find fame per se appealing (Fame Appeal Scale, FAS; Greenwood, Long, & Dal Cin, 2013). We further assessed the extent to which grandiose n...

The purpose of this study was to examine the relation between people’s attraction to celebrities and their interpersonal trust and attachment style. Previous research suggests that individuals with different attachment styles are differentially attracted to celebrities. We predicted that securely attached participants who mistrust, rather than trus...

This study compares and validates measures of the "fear of missing out" (FoMO). We administered two measures of the fear of missing out (FoMO Abel & FoMOPrzy), the Positive and Negative Affect Scales (PANAS), the Need to Belong Scale (NBS), the Rejection Sensitivity Questionnaire (RSQ), the Acceptance and Action Questionnaire-II (AAQ-II), and the E...

Male athletes from interactive team sports were given the GEQ, a satisfaction measure, and the Individualism/collectivism scale, and were rated by their coaches. Extreme individualists were no less coachable and no less satisfied with participation than extreme collectivists.

In 2 studies college Ss were asked to use graphological cues to judge the personality of a person whose handwriting sample was content-laden. Subjects did much better than chance, then it was pointed out to them that they were probably relying on the content, rather than handwriting cues.

Replicated Zajonc' Dumber by the Dozen article with a sample of about 300 Ss. My results were not the same as his. I argued that the effect must be very small.

Exposure of babies to cocaine in utero is hotly debated. This paper reviews some of the long-term behavior characteristics of children born after exposure to cocaine. Strategies for educating mothers and children are explored.

Infusion of celebrity admiration findings into the learning of basic statistical procedures in SPSS.

Our goal was to show how inferential statistics can be used to answer questions stemming from real research in psychology on a topic of interest to many traditional college-age students. We created eight statistical problems of the sort found in introductory statistics courses for psychology (e.g., correlation, Z-test for difference between correla...

The Celebrity Attitude Scale (CAS) has been widely used in the last 15 years, but little is known about how ethnicity and socioeconomic status relate to scores on this scale. In the first of two studies, we showed that a sample of African-American college students had more favorable attitudes toward their favorite celebrities than a sample of White...

Since 2011 there has been a huge increase in the number of new scientific journals. Many of them have been accused of engaging in deceptive or " predatory " practices, and it has been claimed that most of them publish articles of poor quality. We compared 25 articles relevant to psychology taken from these " predatory " journals with 25 psychology-...

We administered the Celebrity Attitude Scale (CAS) and the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO PI-R) to 61 students at an elite university in India. Student scores on the CAS were slightly higher than scores obtained previously in the U.S. and England, suggesting slightly higher amounts of celebrity worship. We examined the pattern of relationsh...

Previous research indicates that persons who self-report a high level of preoccupation with celebrities tend to have lower levels of well-being. We administered the “Romantic Partner Conflict Scale”, the “Love Attitudes Scale”, the soulmate subscale from the “Relationship Theories Questionnaire”, and the anxiety subscale from the “Experiences in Cl...

Fans have a tendency to form one-sided relationships with celebrities who are made famous by both mass and social media. Previous research has shown that celebrity worshipers are more prone to well-being issues than non-worshipers. We studied attitudes toward one’s favorite celebrity among Filipino fans and its relationship to their mental health....

Given the prejudice directed toward religious skeptics, it is imperative that we learn as much as we can about this minority group. We administered the Celebrity Attitude Scale (CAS), and some brief additional measures of attitudes about celebrities to a sample of 91 religious believers and 92 skeptics recruited throughout the US from Mechanical Tu...

We administered a revised version of the Mate Value Scale that focuses on individuals’ perception of their romantic partner's mate value. Students ( N = 330) from four universities completed surveys. The measure demonstrated good internal consistency reliability. Multiple regression analyses indicate that those who perceive their mates as possessin...

Given the prejudice directed toward religious skeptics, it is imperative that we learn as much as we can about this minority group. We administered the Celebrity Attitude Scale (CAS), and some brief additional measures of attitudes about celebrities to a sample of 91 religious believers and 92 skeptics recruited throughout the US from Mechanical Tu...

The present study explored how anger expression relates to the suicidal tendencies of Filipino adolescents. 1,368 university students participated by responding to the Anger-Expression Type Indicator Test (AETIT) and the Suicide Probability Scale (SPS). Results showed that a significant relationship exists between the modes of anger expression and...

Given the prejudice directed toward religious skeptics, it is imperative that we learn as much as we can about this minority group. We administered the Celebrity Attitude Scale (CAS), a brief measure of religious skepticism, the Self Attributed Need for Uniqueness scale (SANU), and the Identification With All Humanity Scale (IWAH) to a sample of 10...

Filipino lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender (LGBT) individuals are subjected to discrimination, prejudice and stigma from society, which in turn may contribute to poor mental health. This study investigated the relationships among self-stigma, self-concept clarity, and mental health status among 566 self-identified Filipino LGBTs. Results re...

This study aims to determine the relationship between perceived parental support and suicidal ideation among 340 self-identified Filipino lesbian and gay (LG) high school students. Findings showed that the greater the rejection of an LG adolescent, the higher the risk of suicidal ideation. Moreover, a rejecting maternal attitude is found to be more...

People that greatly admire a favorite celebrity are often influenced by the media. This is a previously unpublished part of a study that found a link between individuals' cognitive flexibility and their tendency to celebrity worship (Martin, Cayanus, McCutcheon, & Maltby, 2003). Specifically, it was found that individuals who scored high on the two...

This correlational research design investigated the relationship between depression and 2 dimensions of perfectionism: socially prescribed and self-oriented. 173 gifted Filipino adolescents (66 males and 107 females), ages 13 to 17, participated in the study. The results showed that depression scores were significantly related only to socially pres...

We administered the Consideration of Future Consequences Scale (CFC), a brief version of the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale (BIS), the Brief Sensation Seeking Scale (BSSS) and the Celebrity Attitude Scale (CAS) to 263 university students from the United States, Barbados, Jamaica and New Zealand to see how well scores on the first three scales would...

We surveyed college students to determine the relationship between body image and celebrity admiration. We administered the Celebrity Attitude Scale (CAS), the Self-Objectification Questionnaire (SOQ), the Eating Attitudes Test (EAT), and a slightly modified version of the (ESS,) to 279 participants from three universities and one college. We hypot...

In a continuing effort to understand why some people “worship” celebrities, a scale to measure celebrity worship (Celebrity Attitude Scale, CAS) and a written task designed to manipulate the experience of power were administered initially to 820 college and university students from the Manila, Philippines area. Participants were randomly assigned t...

We administered the Perceived Devaluation and Discrimination Scale (PDDS), and the Celebrity Attitude Scale (CAS) to 141 college students to determine the relationship between the two. We predicted that high scorers on the PDDS would tend to have high scores on the CAS and its subscales, and on a brief measure of general interest in celebrities, in...

The purpose of this study was to examine how interest in celebrities relates to materialistic values and envy. We administered the Celebrity Attitude Scale (CAS), the nine-item version of the Material Values Scale (MVS), and a five-item envy scale to 248 participants from four institutions of higher learning. We hypothesized that those who tended t...

We administered the Celebrity Attitude Scale, the intrinsic subscale from the Age-Universal I-E scale-12 and an Analytic Thinking Task to 164 undergraduates from three institutions. An expanded version of the Analytic Thinking Task correlated negatively with Celebrity Attitude Scale scores, as predicted, but not with the intrinsic subscale from the...

We administered the Celebrity Attitude Scale, Quest Scale, and the Age-Universal I-E scale-12 to 164 undergraduates from three institutions in the United States in order to compare their religious values with a sample of English participants obtained by Maltby, et al. (2002). Results showed no overall relationship between the tendency to admire cel...

We administered the Celebrity Attitude Scale, Quest Scale, and the Age-Universal I-E scale-12 to 164 undergraduates from three institutions in the United States in order to compare their religious values with a sample of English participants obtained by Maltby, et al. (2002). Results showed no overall relationship between the tendency to admire cel...