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IMPETUS FOR WORSfflP: AN EXPLORATORY STUDY OF ADOLESCENTS' IDOL ADORATION BEHAVIORS

Ying-Ching Lin and Chien-Hsin Lin

ABSTRACT

The objective of this article is to explore the idolization behaviors of Taiwanese adolescents. The study gathered 1,636 questionnaires from 13 senior high schools across northern, central, southern, and eastern Taiwan. The results indicate that adolescents' gender correlates with the idol type they choose to adore when the idol is male. This study summarizes "exterior," "interior," 'Svealth," and "athlete" as four underljdng idol traits attracting adolescents. Various types of idols are considered to be significantly different on these four traits. The impacts of the four traits on adolescents' worship levels are nonsymmetrical. While the traits of exterior and athlete are worship facilita- tors, the trait of weedth is a prohibitor. By contrast, the trait of interior is neutral and has no effect on worship levels. Furthermore, adolescents are involved in higher levels of worship when the idol is a media star or is the opposite gender of the adolescent. Generally, adolescents' worship levels are heightened by the illusion of a perfect idol, indicating nonrational worship behaviors. Implications regarding the association between adolescents' cogni- tive abilities and idols' traits are discussed for future research.

INTRODUCTION

The phenomenon of idolization is a characteristic of adolescence. An idol is someone whose talents, achievements, status, or physical appearance are especially recognized and appreciated by his or her fans. Since objects of idolization come from various domains of life, sport champions, movie actors/actresses, television personalities, pop

The authors contributed equally to this research; the order of authorship was determined by a coin fiip. The authors gratefully acknowledge Yen-Ju Chen in conducting the study and coding the data.

Chien-Hsin Lin, Department of International Business Studies, National Chi Nan University, Nantou, Taiwan, R.O.C. and Department of International Business, Yu Da College of Business, Miaoli, Taiwan, R.O.C.

Requests for reprints should be sent to Ying-Ching Lin, Department of Busi- ness Administration, National Dong Hwa University. 1, Sec. 2, Da Hsueh Rd., Shou-Feng #974, Hualien County, Taiwan, R.O.C. E-mail: [email protected] hu.edu.tw

ADOLESCENCE, Vol. 42, No. 167. Fall 2007 Libra Publishers. Inc., 3089C Clairemont Dr., PMB 383, San Diego. CA 92117

stars, and political or religious leaders can all be idolized figures (Raviv, Bar-tal, Raviv, & Ben-Horn, 1996). Idolization can take many difFerent forms. From extreme cases of suicides and skipping lessons to catch a glimpse of their idols to listening to CDs casually every now and then, adolescents show their devotion and admiration of their idols in various different ways (McCutcheon, Lange, & Houran, 2002).

Psychologists believe that during adolescents' transition to adult- hood they form strong attachments to figures around them as they search for their own identity (Greene & Adams-Price, 1990; Raviv et al., 1996; Yue & Cheung, 2000). Under such circumstances, identifica- tion with some adults or peer idols enables adolescents to seek informa- tion or values and to prepare themselves for an adult role (Erikson, 1964; 1968). Despite this important phenomenon, research on idoliza- tion behavior is lacking (Cheng, 1997; Yue & Cheung, 2000).

There are several reasons why it may be important to study celebrity idohzation (Engle & Kasser, 2005). First, the identity of adolescents is partially constructed by interacting with popular media and celebri- ties. As per Steele and Brown's (1995) conclusion that media activities are important determinants of adolescents' cognitions and behaviors and that media are sometimes even used to regulate mood, it is neces- sary to understand why and how idolization forms in adolescents. Sec- ond, idolization is an avenue by which they explore romantic views and attitudes toward interpersonal relationships, especially for girls. Kamiol (2001) suggested that idolization may affect the types of rela- tionships they form. Third, idolization may be involved in a subject's well-being. For instance, Cheng (1997) found that celebrity fan club members in Hong Kong reported lower self-esteem than did non-fan club members. Finally, idolization is clearly relevant to the economic behavior of adolescents.

Studies on idolization in Chinese societies are equally rare and have been mostly conducted in Hong Kong (So & Chan, 1992; Wong & Ma, 1997; Chan, Cheung, Lee, Leung, & Liu, 1998; Cheung & Yue, 1999; Yue & Cheung, 2000; see also Yue & Cheung, 2000 for a review). The purpose of this study is to clarify the social or personahty attributes of an idol and a model as perceived by adolescents in a Chinese soci- ety—Taiwan. This exploratory study attempts to describe in depth the patterns of Taiwanese adolescents' idol worship behaviors. Specifically, we delineate the idol traits which attract adolescents, examine how adolescents rate their favorite idols based on underlying idol traits, and finally explore the relationship between idol traits and adolescents' worship levels.

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METHOD

Participants A mail survey was conducted of students from 13 senior high schools

across Taiwan; 2,100 questionnaires were mailed and 1,958 were re- turned. After deleting questionnaires with incomplete data, 1,636 were used for analysis. The response rate was 77.9%.

Measures The questionnaire was designed to measure respondents' criteria for

choosing favorite idols and models. It is composed of idol characteris- tics, reasons for worship, intensity of respondents' worship levels, and respondents' characteristics. Eight dichotomous items regarding rea- sons for worship were augmented from Chiang (2003). The worship levels were measured using the 17-item, 5-point Likert type celebrity worship scale (McCutcheon et al., 2002). The reliability of the celebrity worship scale estimated with Cronbach's alpha was 0.94. The worship levels (McCutcheon et al., 2002) suggest three increasingly extreme sets of idol worship behavior: individualistic behaviors, social activi- ties, and borderline pathology. As worship level increases, these behav- iors increasingly occur together. Since the celebrity worship construct is best considered as unidimensional, we calculate the mean score of the 17 items to represent respondents' intensity of worship levels.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

Sample Characteristics The sample of adolescents is composed of more females (83.3%) than

males (16.7%), and the mean age is 17 years with a range from 15 to 19. Thirty-two percent of the adolescents are in their first level of senior high school, 32.8% in the second level, and 35.6% in the third level. The residential areas of the sample are 34.2% in northern Tai- wan, 32.5% in central Taiwan, 23.9% in southern Taiwan, and 9.4% in eastern Taiwan. Overall, the sample appears to be adequate in rep- resenting Taiwanese senior high school adolescents' idol adoration be- haviors. Table 1 summarizes the sample characteristics.

Adolescents' Favorite Idols The gender of the adolescents' favorite idols is more male (65.4%)

than female (34.6%). Consistent with Yue and Cheung's results in

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Table 1:

Gender Female Male

Age (in Years) 15 16 17 18 19

Senior High School Level First

Second Third

Residential Area Northern Taiwan Central Taiwan

Southern Taiwan Eastern Taiwan

Sample Charactenstics N

1,362 274

28 411 635 506 56

516 537 583

560 531 391 154

83.3 16.7

1.7 25.1 38.8 30.9 3.4

31.5 32.8 35.6

34.2 32.5 23.9 9.4

Hong Kong (2000), most (66.8%) ofthe selected favorite idols are celeb- rities in media or entertainment fields (e.g., actors, singers, or ath- letes). Some (10.1%) are noncelebrities (e.g., family, friends, or teachers), and some (10.7%) are fictitious characters (e.g., Spiderman), whereas few are politicians (3.0%), intellectuals (4.6%), or entrepre- neurs (4.8%). According to the results, adolescents tend to worship idols who are accessible in their daily lives (e.g., noncelebrities) or through mass media (e.g., media stars and fictitious characters). As to the reasons for idolization, "Good-looking" was chosen most (41.4%), while "rich" was the least (9.0%). Table 2 summarizes the idol charac- teristics and reasons for idolization.

Does Gender Matter? Since the data on idols' characteristics show a gender difference

in terms of favorites, more extensive analyses were conducted. Results indicate that the gender of more than half of the adolescents (55.5%) chose is opposite from that of their favorite idols. Table 3 shows that

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Table 2: Idol Characteristics

Gender Female Male

Idol Type Media Stars (e.g., actor, singer, or athlete) Politicians Intellectual Idols (e.g., scientist, writer, musician, or artist) Entrepreneur Idols Non-Celebrities (e.g., family, friend, or teacher) Fictitious Characters (e.g., Spiderman)

Reasons for Idolization Good-looking Attractive dressing Attractive body shape Rich Humorous and funny Knowledgeable and clever Sporty Civic-minded and caring

566 1070

1093 49 76

78 165

175

677

370 368 148 529 571 365 385

34.6 65.4

66.8 3.0 4.6

4.8

10.1

10.7

41.4 22.6 22.5 9.0 32.3 34.9 22.3 23.5

Table 3: Adolescent's Gender vs. Favorite Idol's Gender Adolescent's Gender

Idol's Gender Female Male Female 510(37.4%) 56(20.4%) Male 852(62.6%) 218(79.6%)

gender of adolescents and idols are associated (x^d) = 29.16,p < 0.01). Female adolescents appear to prefer male idols (62.6%) to female idols (37.4%), whereas this phenomenon is the same for male adolescents, whose favorite idols also are more male (79.%) than female (20.4%). On the other hand, male adolescents adore male idols more (79.6%) than do female adolescents (62.6%).

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We next analyzed the association between adolescents' gender and the types of favorite idols. As shown in Table 4, when the idol is female, adolescents' gender and idol types are not associated (x (̂5) = 1.32, p > 0.5). However, when the idol is male (see Table 5), adolescents' gender is significantly related to the idol tjT)es (x (̂5) = 27.54, p < 0.01). Table 5 shows that female adolescents worship more male media stars (69.2%) than do males (51.8%). By contrast, male adolescents worship more male politicians (7.3%) and more fictitious characters (19.3%) than do females (2.8% for politicians and 13.1% for fictitious characters).

Overall, the result is in line with that of Raviv et al. (1996)—that most of the male and female adolescents choose a male media star as their favorite rather than a female and rather than other types of idols. Despite the consistency between male and female adolescents' selections, the psychological processes are supposed to be distinct from each other. The findings for the female might be due to the fact that male media stars provide a safe and convenient romantic attachment for female adolescents (Adams-Price & Greene, 1990; Kamiol, 2001), whereas identification attachment accounts for males' worship of male media stars (Adams-Price & Greene, 1990). Furthermore, when consid- ering the absolute numbers in Tables 4 and 5, we found only 21 female fictitious idols (vs. 154 male fictitious idols) and only 9 female politi- cians (vs. 40 male politicians). The differences may refiect gender in- equality in the virtual world and in the political field.

Underlying Idol Traits that Attract Adolescents Because there are eight causes for worshipping idols, the next analy-

sis revealed the major dimensions of variation between these reasons for worship. We defined the dichotomous items of reasons to worship as ordinal and thus applied categorical principal components analysis for quantifying the observed reasons. Table 6 summarizes the results. Four meaningful dimensions, accounting for 69% of the variance, were retained to represent ioxa latent idol traits that attract adolescents.

On the first dimension, "good-looking," "attractive dressing," and "attractive body shape" have high and positive component loadings (all other worship causes have mediocre positive loadings). We refer to this dimension as "exterior." By contrast, the second dimension "interior," refiecting idols' inside virtues," correlates mainly with "humorous and funny," "knowledgeable and clever," "civic-minded and caring," and "good-looking," "attractive dressing," "attractive body shape," in oppo- site directions, while having little relation with "rich" and "sporty." This pattern suggests that idols with a high score on "interior" have a

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Table 4: Adolescent

Female Idol Type Media Stars Politicians Intellectual Entrepreneur Non-Celebrities Fictitious Characters

's Gender vs. Female Adolescent's Gender

Female 350(68.6%)

8(1.6%) 24 (4.7%) 27 (5.3%) 83 (16.3%) 18(3.5%)

Idol Type

Male 40(71.4%)

1 0-8%) 3 (5.4%) 2 (3.6%) 7 (12.5%) 3 (5.4%)

Table 5: Adolescent's Gender vs. Male Idol

Male Idol Type Media Stars Politicians Intellectual Entrepreneur Non-Celebrities Fictitious Characters

Adolescent's Gender Female

590 (69.2%) 1 24 (2.8%) 37 (4.3%) 34 (4.0%) 55 (6.5%)

Type

Male 13(51.8%) 16 (7.3%) 12 (5.5%) 15(6.9%) 20 (9.2%)

112(13.1%) 42(19.3%)

Table 6: Component Loadings of Worship Reasons on

Worship Reason Good-looking Attractive dressing Attractive body shape Humorous and funny Knowledgeable and

clever Civic-minded and

caring Rich Sporty

Eigenvalue % of Variance Explained

Exterior 0.654 0.736 0.727 0.433 0.302

0.473

0.393 0.389 2.31 28.8

Idol Interior -0.375 -0.275 -0.319 0.546 0.611

0.541

-0.054 0.062 1.29 16.1

Trait Wealth -0.239 -0.090 -0.022 -0.304 0.306

-0.194

0.828 0.115 0.99 12.3

Idol Traits

Athlete -0.088 -0.180 -0.118 0.179 -0.399

-0.044

0.040 0.833 0.94 11.8

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high score on "humorous and funny," "knowledgeable and clever," and "civic-minded and caring," and a low score on "good-looking," "attrac- tive dressing," and "attractive body shape." "Wealth," the third dimen- sion, reveals a contrast between "rich," "knowledgeable and clever," and "humorous and funny." Adolescents consider that wealthy idols are clever while also serious. The fourth dimension, "athlete," contrasts between "sporty" and "knowledgeable and clever."

The above analyses raise two issues. First, all reasons for idolization are positively loaded on the trait "exterior." This pattern implies that good-looking idols with attractive body shapes and wearing attractive apparel are rich, sporty, and also have good virtue. Could the "perfect idol" be merely an illusion? The "perfect idol syndrome" might be at- tributed to the halo effect of idols' brilliant images. Second, the "inte- rior" trait contrasts between idols' good virtue and outside images, the 'Svealth" contrasts between rich and humorous, and the "athlete" contrasts between sporty and knowledgeable. Are those patterns reali- ties or only stereotypes assigned to idols? Collectively, adolescents' evaluations of idols appear to be dominated by the halo emitted by idols' surface images. When these images are not prominent, adoles- cents seem to choose idols by stereot3nping. To facilitate subsequent analyses, latent traits scores were calculated respectively for each re- spondent's favorite idol.

How are different Idol Types Evaluated on Idol Traits and Worship Levels?

We then conducted a MANOVA to examine how adolescents evaluate the six idol types on the four underlying idol traits as a whole. The results indicate that the six types show significantly different overall traits (Wilks's lambda = 0.66; Pillai's trace = 0.38; Hotelhng's trace = 0.48; allps < 0.01). We then conducted four independent univariate ANOVAs on these four traits, and the results show that different types of idols are considered differently on these traits, respectively (all ps < 0.01). Tuke/s HSD post hoc comparisons were analyzed to deter- mine the subtle differences. Table 7 summarizes the comparison re- sults.

Media stars are regarded as having more favorable exteriors than any other types of idols. However, media stars exhibit a less pleasing interior and are less affluent than most other types of idols. Entrepre- neurs, unsurprisingly, are the wealthiest across the six idol types, while noncelebrities have the highest interior trait. Interestingly, fic- titious characters are thought of as being much wealthier and having a better interior than media stars.

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ANOVAs on the worship levels show that the six types of idols are worshiped with different intensities {F{5, 1630) = 8.62, p < 0.01. Tu- key's HSD post hoc tests (see Tahle 7) indicate that media stars are worshiped more intensely than intellectuals, entrepreneurs, and ficti- tious idols. We speculate that this phenomenon might he due to the intensive commercial manipulation to promote media idols (Giles, 2000).

Factors that Influence the Intensity of Worship Levels A regression model was conducted to assess how well the set of idol

traits explain adolescents' worship levels. As discussed, gender-dissim- ilarity-attraction and idol t3T)es are hoth critical variables that influ- ence adolescents' worship hehaviors; thus we also include these two variables in the regression model. Grender difference was coded as a dummy variable with one indicating a different gender hetween the adolescent and idol. The idol type is also coded as a dummy variable with one indicating that the tĵ je of the adolescent's favorite idol is a media star. Worship levels were then regressed on gender difference, idol type, exterior, interior, wealthy and athlete. Table 8 shows the regression results.

As can be seen in Table 8, except for the interior trait, all indepen- dent variables are significantly related to worship levels. We found

Table 8: Regression

Independent Variables Difference in Gender between Adolescent and Idol Idol Type: Media Star Idol Trait: Exterior Idol Trait: Interior Idol Trait: Wealth Idol Trait: Athlete

R Square Adjusted R Square F-value (6,1629)

Results of Worship Levels Dependent Variable:

Worship Level Standardized Coefficients

0.07*** (2.78)

0.06" (2.12) 0.26"' (10.92)

0.04(1.58) -0.10'" (-3.91) 0.10'" (4.12)

0.108 0.104

32.74"' Note: t-values in parentheses.

*><0.05 **><0.01

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that differences in sex between adolescents and their favorite idols was associated with adolescents' heightened worship levels. Adolescents are more likely to be fascinated with their idols when he/she is a media star or is attractive for the exterior or athlete traits. However, the worship levels are negatively correlated with the wealth trait, but are not associated with the interior trait.

We could derive further implications from the worship pattern exhib- ited by the model. First, though the four underlying idol traits appear to be positive in nature, their impacts on adolescents' worship levels are nonsymmetrical. While the traits of exterior and athlete are wor- ship facilitators, the wealth trait is a prohibitor. Unexpectedly, the interior traits is neutral from adolescents' perspectives. Next, similar to the finding of Raviv et al. (1996), the exterior trait is the most important factor in adolescents' worship intensity. In combination with the illusory exterior (as discussed, the composition of exterior trait implies perfect idol illusion) and indeterminate interior, adolescents' worship behaviors appear to be nonrational. In other words, idolization may be related to materialism, which emphasizes the right image and possessions (Engle & Kasser, 2005), and adolescents may choose ideal- ism (vs. realism) and romanticism (vs. rationalism) in selecting idols (Yue & Cheung, 2000).

CONCLUSIONS

To explore adolescents' idol adoration behavior, we collected 1,636 samples from 13 senior high schools across Taiwan. The results show: (a) over half of the adolescents adore gender idols that are different from themselves. The results also show that most female and male adolescents' favorite idols are male. Specifically, female adolescents tend to worship more male media stars than do male adolescents, while male adolescents worship more male politicians and more fictitious characters than do female adolescents, (b) To explore the reasons for idolization, the four idol traits that attract adolescents—exterior, inte- rior, wealth, and athlete—^were retained in this study. Interestingly, we found that those respondents tend to stereots^pe their idols. For example, adolescents thought that media stars would have a more favorable exterior trait, but would have less of an interior trait, entre- preneurs make up the wealthiest group, and noncelebrities have the highest interior trait, (c) The idolization level differs between idol types and provide different reasons for worship. The worship levels intensify when idols are media stars or when adolescents are attracted by an

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idol's exterior trait. However, the idolization levels are negatively cor- related with the wealth trait and are not associated with the interior trait.

Adolescents tend to establish a positive self-identity and social iden- tity through idolization (Cheng, 1997; Raviv et al., 1996). Self-categori- zation often occurs in the process of searching for an identity (Turner, 1987). Our findings imply that adolescents mainly classify themselves and their favorite idols using the exterior trait, which intensified idol- ization hehaviors. Compared with the social value that often empha- sizes an individual's interior trait, it seems that the trait of exterior is not a good basis for establishing adolescents' self-identity. Adolescents' selection of an idol is probably market-driven and media-determined (Yue & Cheung, 2000), and technology might be blamed for the spread of these delusional beliefs within the youth culture (Showalter, 1997). These behaviors based on idols' exterior traits may prevent adolescents from seeking information regarding other idols who are not exterior- oriented, thus increasing the stereotyping of those idols (i.e., those who are interior, wealthy, or athlete-oriented).

As individuals' idol worship attitudes and behaviors are negatively correlated with their cognitive abilities, such as critical thinking and creativity (McCutcheon, Ashe, Houran, & Maltby, 2003), one plausible explanation for our finding of distorted idol worship behavior is adoles- cents' cognitive deficits. Adolescents may be relatively low in cognitive functioning, which causes them to more easily accept commercial and materialistic messages (Engle & Kasser, 2005), thus precluding them from admiring an idol's interior. Adolescents' idol adoration behaviors also infiuence their consuming behaviors (Chiou, Huang, & Chuang, 2005) and sometimes have detrimental effects on their mental and physical health (Maltby, Giles, Barber, & McCutcheon, 2005). In addi- tion, adolescents may select idols as their epistemic authorities on whom they rely in accumulating knowledge or forming values (Engle & Kasser, 2005; Raviv et al., 1996). Since this reliance is likely to be connected to adolescents' delinquent behaviors (Chan et al., 1998), edu- cators should stress the importance of idolization behaviors, and make the public aware of mass media manipulation of adolescents' cogni- tive deficits.

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