Word: esteem
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...course, there's a worst-case scenario: that McCain would, if elected, maintain his predecessor's chilly relationship with Spain. Spaniards may, on the whole, revile American politics and American comida de basura (junk food), but they still tend to measure their Prime Minister's international worth by the esteem with which the U.S. President holds him. And so, for the past four years, the Spanish Prime Minister has tried, ever so earnestly, to prove that he's one of the big boys. At every international summit he has tried to maneuver himself into position for a photograph with Bush...
Shira Gabriel, a psychologist at the University at Buffalo, conducted a series of three studies on celebrity worship, focusing specifically on how admiration from afar may affect the admirer's self-esteem. "It was seven or eight years ago during the Michael Jackson trial," she says, "and I was fascinated by the people who were obsessed with him, who flew to the trial and made banners. I thought, What would bring somebody to do something like that?" One possible reason, which Gabriel decided to explore, was the vicarious pleasure that regular people get from following the lives of famous people...
...from a scientific point of view, it was intriguing to Gabriel: Could science actually measure the psychological benefit of celebrity worship? Gabriel enlisted a group of 348 college students, one-fifth of whom admitted to having a celebrity crush. She gave all the students an 11-item self-esteem questionnaire; their responses allowed researchers to rank the participants according to their baseline level of self-esteem. Next, she instructed the students to spend five minutes writing an essay about their favorite celebrity, an exercise designed to bring their fan feelings to the fore. Finally, all subjects were given the same...
...turned out that the students who initially scored lowest on the self-esteem scale scored much higher on the second test - almost as high as those who started out with the highest self-esteem scores - after they wrote about their best-loved celebrities. "Because people form bonds in their mind with their favorite celebrities, they are able to assimilate the celebrity's characteristics in themselves and feel better about themselves when they think about that celebrity," says Gabriel. "And that is something these individuals can't do in real relationships because their fear of rejection keeps them from getting close...
...first to acknowledge that her results are not a blanket endorsement of celebrity worship for mental stability. A little can be good, but a lot can become harmful - as stalking and more obsessive behaviors prove. Recent research has even found that celebrity worship can decrease a person's self-esteem because the endless admiration and yearning for a life and lifestyle that are out of reach may end up cementing one's feelings of isolation and inadequacy. Studies conducted in Britain found a range of celebrity-worship styles, from harmless adulation to debilitating addiction. Other research has documented...