Why do we engage in celebrity worship?

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

The Hard Shoulder, with Ciara Kelly and Shane Colman. On Newstalk, with Ciara.

Shane Coleman (0:08)

Now, why do we put celebrities on a pedestal that means we trust their judgment from political opinion to health care tips, minus the medical degree, obviously. We are sometimes inclined to take their word as gospel. And joining us now to discuss this is Brendan Kelly, Professor of Psychiatry at Trinity College Dublin.

Is it a bit of hero worship? Is it, you know, we kind of see these very good-looking celebrities and maybe they influence that way. Why are we so influenced?

Brendan Kelly (0:35)

Well, we want to be influenced. We search for advice. We want people to talk to us. And we look for advice from all kinds of people. We take medical advice from members of our family who know absolutely nothing about what they're discussing. We look for intimate personal advice from friends who are spectacularly badly experienced to advise us. So it's no surprise that into this coterie of ill-informed advisors, we bring in celebrities as well because we want to take advice from people in order to, I don't know, feel less individual responsibility, feel more connected, feel that stuff makes sense, feel that we're part of a network. So they're part of that. But I guess your question is good. We do lean on them maybe more than we should, certainly more than they lean on us.

Ciara Kelly (1:20)

I'm not sure that they lean on us overly at all. But you mentioned that people are not being, in any way, qualified or experienced to give this advice. This is true. I mean, everything from Brooklyn Beckham, who I know you follow, Professor, to he cooks a lot and he does recipes and all that, which are eggs and all sorts of things that you'd like.

But it looks to me when he's cooking that he doesn't know how to cook.

Brendan Kelly (1:47)

Well, there's something called the halo effect, whereby if someone is good at one thing, we will likely take their advice not only about that, but about other things as well. You might have a movie star who's good at being in movies, but maybe they also have a peculiar health or skincare regime, and that might achieve popularity owing to this halo effect. We reckon if they're good at acting, they're good in movies, that they're going to know about skincare, they're going to know about health.

We take advice from them or we give weight to what they say, even when they happen to breeze what they're on about.

Ciara Kelly (2:19)

There's an awful lot of celebrities who stick their toe in the political opinion water. I was thinking just recently when there was the standoff on Garvahy Road in Portadown, that the huge numbers of musicians came out to take up the nationalist cause and the Garvahy residents cause. And I thought it was quite interesting. Do they feel a pressure, do you think, do you just offer unsolicited opinions or advice or take positions on things? Do you think, is that some of, is that part of this too?

Brendan Kelly (2:54)

There is a pressure. Now, in the example you gave, you know, I can see reasons why people are, who are, say, embedded in culture or in cultural production or in the arts would be weighing in with thoughts or views or perspectives. But it can go across a line. I think people in the public arena, especially celebrities, are under enormous pressure to continually produce a material for social media, continue to keep up their likes, their clicks and so forth. And so they are likely to talk about more or less anything in order to keep up that public profile. So the pressure on public figures has become massive to comment about everything, to keep a flow going day and night. And that can lead people to stray well outside their lane and start talking about stuff they know nothing about and they're not in a position to advise about.

Shane Coleman (3:43)

Is there also a bit of people straying out of their lane? I'm thinking particularly of sports, where you read an autobiography or see someone online and they lead this very disciplined life and train intently as, you know, put the fear of God into everybody, as Paul O'Connell might say. And people aspire to that when maybe you play junior be hurling or maybe you don't play sport at all anymore and you're really not living the same kind of life at all.

Brendan Kelly (4:08)

Yeah, so we can over identify in ways that are unrealistic with someone we like in the public arena. We can, we have what's called a parasocial relationship with them, whereby we feel we know a lot about them. We feel close to them. They don't even know we exist. So it's a hugely uneven relationship. So we can over rely on these parasocial relationships, even when they are far distant from anything that we can conceivably achieve or anything that we might want to achieve ultimately when we step back. So it's easy to be misled by this. To take just one random example and maybe to share a personal story. I know Ciara always likes the emotional disclosure on the program.