Everyone knows someone who can recite an actress’s entire filmography, analyze a singer’s every move, or debate for hours about the latest celebrity breakup. This passion often raises a somewhat spicy question: does being obsessed with celebrities make you less intelligent, or does it reveal something specific about our way of thinking?
A study published in 2021 in the journal BMC Psychology, conducted among 1,763 Hungarian adults, provides some answers. It highlights a weak but real link between obsession with celebrities and slightly lower scores on cognitive ability tests. Moreover, it describes a remarkable ability of the brain to focus almost entirely on a single public figure.
Obsessions with celebrities and intelligence
For nearly twenty years, various studies have explored the relationship between celebrity worship and intellectual performance, with very variable results. Some research previously suggested a slight decrease in cognitive scores among the most extreme fans, while others found nothing significant. The Hungarian team sought to clarify this link by relying on Raymond Cattell’s two-factor theory of intelligence, which distinguishes between fluid intelligence and crystallized intelligence.
The researchers recruited adults from the general population for an online survey. Each participant took a vocabulary test, reflecting crystallized intelligence (acquired knowledge and culture), and a symbols and numbers test, measuring fluid intelligence (processing speed, mental flexibility). The participants also completed the Celebrity Attitude Scale, which assesses the level of celebrity obsession, Rosenberg’s self-esteem scale, and provided information on their level of education, income, and perception of their material situation.
Cognitive abilities according to the level of obsession
To describe the relationship with celebrities, the authors distinguish three levels. The first, called “social entertainment,” involves people who are interested in stars mainly for the pleasure of discussing them with others. The next level, “intense-personal,” refers to a strong emotional attachment, with the feeling of intimately knowing the celebrity. Finally, the “borderline pathological” level describes fans willing to do almost anything if their idol requested it.
As scores at these three levels increase, cognitive test performance slightly decreases. Even when considering age, gender, education level, income, perceived wealth, and self-esteem, obsession with celebrities remains associated with slightly lower scores. However, the effect is modest: the combination of education level, income, and celebrity worship explains less than 5% of the performance variation. The researchers also emphasize that this is a correlation, with no evidence that being an obsessive fan lowers intelligence, or vice versa.
A quality not to overlook
To interpret these results, the authors propose an interesting hypothesis: excessive behaviors like idol worship require a massive investment of attention and mental energy. Maintaining what they describe as a “unilateral emotional bond” with a celebrity engages memory, imagination, and daily tracking of that person’s news. This ability to hyper-focus on a single public figure is precisely the remarkable quality observed.
Highly invested fans remember dates, outfits, interview quotes, analyze details that others don’t even notice. Their brain functions somewhat like a projector focused on a single subject. The authors point out that this hyper-focus, when it becomes extreme, may leave fewer resources available for other cognitive tasks, hence the slightly lower test scores. They also note that people with higher cognitive abilities are more likely to recognize the “marketing strategies” surrounding celebrities, which would lead them to maintain more critical distance.
