Role of Parasocial Interaction with Celebrities and Worshiping them in Prediction of Cognitive Dissonance

The present study aimed to investigate the role of parasocial interaction with celebrities and to worship them in the prediction of cognitive dissonance. The research design was descriptive and correlational. The statistical population of the study consisted of students of the faculty of psychology and educational sciences of the University of Tehran in 1397-98. In this study, 200 girl and boy students (100 girl students and 100 boy students) were selected by convenience sampling method. For collecting data, celebrity parasocial interaction scale (Bocarnea & Brown, 2007), Celebrity worship attitude scale (McCutcheon et al., 2002) and researcher-made questionnaire of celebrity-related cognitive dissonance were used. The data were analyzed by Pearson correlation and enter multiple regressions. The results indicated that the parasocial interaction with celebrities and worshiping them are correlated with celebrity-related cognitive dissonance positively. Also, parasocial interaction with celebrities and worshiping them can predict celebrity-related cognitive dissonance significantly. According to the results, parasocial interaction with celebrities and worshiping them are critical factors in cognitive dissonance. In other words, increasing of interacting with celebrities leads to increases in cognitive dissonances of celebrity worshipers against aversive cognitions about their favorite celebrities.