Structural Analysis of Relationship between Celebrity Worship and Psychological Wellbeing: Mediating Role of Cognitive Flexibility

Celebrity worship as a parasocial relationship with celebrities can affect psychological wellbeing, but meanwhile, cognitive abilities and especially cognitive flexibility can play effective roles due to the effect on interpersonal communication. Therefore, the present study aims to investigate the relationship between the celebrity worship and psychological wellbeing with the mediating role of cognitive flexibility.

The research design was descriptive and correlational. The statistical population of the study consisted of students of Guilan University in 2018. Among them, 300 female and female students were selected through convenient sampling method. After selecting the sample, celebrity worship attitude (McCutcheon, Lange & Houran, 2002), Ryff’s scale of psychological wellbeing (Ryff, 1989), and cognitive flexibility inventory (Dennis & Vander Wal, 2010) were given to participants. Pearson correlation coefficient and structural analysis were used to analyze data.

According to the results, celebrity worship was correlated to psychological wellbeing and cognitive flexibility significantly. In fact, celebrity worship directly had negative and significant effect on psychological wellbeing and cognitive flexibility. Moreover, the indirect effect of celebrity worship on psychological wellbeing through the cognitive flexibility was negative and significant. Therefore, it can be concluded that the cognitive flexibility has a mediating role in the relationship between the celebrity worship and psychological well-being. In other words, by increasing cognitive flexibility, psychological well-being problems caused by extreme involvement with celebrities would be reduced.

Considering the mediating role of cognitive flexibility in the relationship between celebrity worship and psychological wellbeing, it can be argued that by increasing cognitive flexibility, psychological well-being problems caused by celebrity worship decreases as well.