The role of media figures in adolescent development: relations between autonomy, attachment, and interest in celebrities

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Abstract

The influence of figures from the mass media on adolescent development has been somewhat neglected in the literature to date. One particularly important influence concerns the parasocial relationships that adolescents form with favourite celebrities, which have been described as secondary attachments. In this study, celebrity interest was investigated in a sample of 191 British adolescents between the ages of 11 and 16, using a shortened version of the Celebrity Attitude Scale. It was hypothesised that celebrity attachments would reflect the transition from parental attachment to peer attachments and would also be related to increasing emotional autonomy. It was found that, after controlling for age-related effects, high emotional autonomy was a significant predictor of celebrity interest, as well as high attachment to peers and low attachment to parents. Different patterns were observed according to the functions of celebrity attachment: intense, personal interest in celebrities was best predicted by low levels of security and closeness. These findings suggest that celebrities provide adolescents with a secondary group of pseudo-friends during a time of increasing autonomy from parents, but intense focus on a single celebrity may result from difficulties in making this transition.

Section snippets

Participants

The participants were 191 schoolchildren (93 males, 98 females), aged between 11 and 16 years (Mean age=13.57; S.D.=1.4), sampled from a number of schools in South Yorkshire and Lincolnshire regions of England.

Forty-eight respondents were in Year 7 of school, 47 respondents were in Year 8 of school, 47 respondents were in Year 9 of school, 25 respondents were in Year 10 of school, and 24 respondents were in Year 11 of school. The most frequently cited ethnic group was White British (n=109),

Bivariate analyses

The Pearson product–moment correlations between the subscales and demographic variables are displayed in Table 1.

The variable of age has significant positive correlations with all the measures in the study with the exception of closeness (no association), and the parents and security subscales of the AORI, with which it has significant negative correlations. These findings are in line with the predictions that celebrity interest and emotional autonomy increase during middle adolescence, and

Discussion

The results from the multiple regression lend support to the hypothesis that emotional autonomy and attachment to celebrities increase during adolescence, and are positively related to one another. Age was highly correlated with both measures, but emotional autonomy still explained a significant portion of celebrity interest after age had been entered on the first step of the regression equation, suggesting that the relationship between the two measures cannot be accounted for entirely by

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