There’s nothing wrong with enjoying a bit of celebrity gossip. Whether it’s the latest Kardashian drama or football fans kicking off over Taylor Swift’s relationship with Travis Kelce, we all like to indulge in a little mindless “news” every once in a while, even if only to distract ourselves from the horrible things going on in the world on occasion.
However, for some people, celebrity worship is a serious problem. They become downright obsessed with certain stars to the point that they follow their every move and even attack any naysayers online. Perhaps unsurprisingly, a study published in BMC Psychology found that people like that are actually not very smart.
The celebrity-obsessed aren’t very bright.
For the 2022 study, researchers had 1,763 Hungarian adults to take a 30-word vocabulary test and something called a “digit symbol substitution” test. After, they then filled out a questionnaire on their feelings about celebrities to determine how interested/uninterested in Hollywood they are.
The statements on the questionnaire included stuff like “I often feel compelled to learn the personal habits of my favorite celebrity” 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,” with participants asked to answer each question with a simple yes or no.
The results? Those who held celebrities in higher regard performed worse on the intelligence-based tests.
The evidence was pretty clear.
After the study authors checked out the results of the tests and the questionnaire, they noticed “a direct association between celebrity worship and poorer performance on cognitive tests.”
In other words, those who did really well on the intelligence-based tests, cared a lot less about celebs. Conversely, the celeb-obsessed struggled with cognitive function (though the researchers didn’t imply that this group failed — they just performed noticeably poorer).
The study authors added that in order to get a clearer picture, they also gathered info on participants’ income and education, though they didn’t reveal how that affected results, if at all.
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Which came first, the chicken or the egg?
What researchers are interested in knowing more about is how the lack of cognitive function and celebrity obsession are linked. Did they do worse on the intelligence-based tests because their mental energy is taken up by thinking about pointless things like celebrities, or do they feel more attached to the stars due to less cognitive function? Or, is it both?
“Future studies should seek further support for our suggestion that the cognitive effort invested in maintaining the absorption in a favorite celebrity may interfere with the person’s performance in tasks that require attention and other cognitive skills,” study authors Lynn E. McCutcheon, Ágnes Zsila, and Zsolt Demetrovics told PsyPost.
“Although our research does not prove that developing a powerful obsession with one’s favorite celebrity causes one to score lower on cognitive tests, it suggests that it might be wise to carefully monitor feelings for [them].”
