Evidence of celebrity worshippers’ attentional bias toward idol faces

Celebrity worship refers to individuals’ social identification with and emotional attachment to their idols. In this study Experiment 1 explored participants’ attentional bias toward idol faces during the attentional orienting phase of a dot-probe task, and Experiment 2 compared attentional bias for high- and low-worship groups during the attentional release phase using a dot-probe task and a spatial cueing task. Results showed that the high- (vs. low-) worship group exhibited shorter reaction times in the condition where the idol face and probe dot were consistent, and that their celebrity worship scores were positively correlated with their attention bias index. The high- (vs. low-) worship group also exhibited longer reaction times when idol faces were used as invalid stimuli. In conclusion, the high-worship group showed attentional facilitation and attentional disengagement difficulties for idol faces, and higher worship scores were associated with a stronger attentional bias.