A new study published in Deviant Behavior links an intense obsession with celebrities to criminal thinking patterns and vulnerable narcissism, suggesting that the darker side of celebrity worship is tied to a deeply insecure self-concept and a willingness to justify rule-breaking.
Celebrity worship is described as a one-sided parasocial relationship with a public figure, existing on a spectrum from mild interest to borderline pathological fixation. In milder forms, people may simply enjoy chatting about their favourite actors or musicians; at the extreme end, attachment can become obsessive and disrupt daily functioning.
Central to the study’s framework is narcissism, a personality trait split into grandiose and vulnerable subtypes. Grandiose narcissism tends to involve arrogance and overconfidence, while vulnerable narcissism is marked by insecurity, anxiety and sensitivity to perceived threats or rejection.
Researchers note that insecure personality types, including vulnerable narcissism, have been linked in prior work to anxious attachment styles formed in childhood. A parasocial relationship with an idol can then offer a sense of connection that avoids real-world rejection.
The long-running link between extreme celebrity worship and harmful behaviour has a precedent in criminology. A 2007 study suggested pathological worshippers exhibit higher rates of criminal tendencies, and a 2021 study highlighted how differences between grandiose and vulnerable narcissism can illuminate the psychology behind crime.
Building on this trajectory, the 2025 work by Williams, Confer, Krueger and Locker Jr. sought to test how celebrity worship and the two narcissism types relate to criminal thinking—attitudes that justify illegal acts or downplay the harm caused to victims.
In the new study, 237 undergraduate students from a large university in the southeastern United States participated, with an average age around 21 and a sample that was predominantly female. Data were collected via an online survey using established questionnaires designed to measure celebrity worship, grandiose and vulnerable narcissism, and six categories of criminal thinking, including a desire for power, justification of wrongdoing and insensitivity to victims.
The researchers found a clear divergence in how the two narcissism subtypes interact with celebrity worship. Vulnerable narcissism was reliably linked to higher levels of celebrity worship across the board, with more insecure and anxious individuals tending to obsess over their chosen stars. Grandiose narcissism, by contrast, showed no statistical relationship with celebrity worship.
They explained that vulnerable narcissism—characterised by anxiety, low self-esteem and social avoidance—tends to drive obsessive parasocial attachments as a maladaptive coping strategy to manage daily distress and identity development.
Both narcissism forms related to criminal thinking, but in different ways. Grandiose narcissism was mainly tied to a desire for power and a lack of sensitivity to the harm caused by crime, whereas vulnerable narcissism predicted a much broader range of antisocial attitudes, aligning with a wider acceptance of deviant behaviour.
“It was interesting to see that the vulnerable subtype of narcissism continued to be a consistent and strong predictor of celebrity worship, which fits with our previous work,” the researchers noted. “However, now we show that the vulnerability associated with that subtype of narcissism, more so than the grandiose subtype, may also be predictive of criminal thinking styles. The consistency of the findings related to vulnerable narcissism underscores its importance to understanding constructs such as celebrity worship and criminal thinking styles in greater detail.”
The data also showed a strong association between celebrity worship and criminal thinking, with the strength of the link increasing alongside the intensity of the worship. At the lowest level of engagement—where celebrities are a topic of conversation rather than a fixation—participants exhibited lower levels of grandiosity and greater sensitivity to the harms of crime, suggesting harmless or even pro-social attitudes among casual fans.
“To prevent misinterpretation, readers should not assume that all forms of celebrity interest are harmful,” the researchers said. “In this study, the entertainment-social level (the lowest level) of celebrity worship was actually predictive of lower criminal thinking and higher social desirability.”
Yet those at the extreme end of the spectrum told a different story. Participants with high scores in borderline-pathological worship were much more likely to endorse criminal thinking, to justify rule-breaking, to seek power and revenge, and to disregard the harm caused by illegal actions. Even when the researchers controlled for both narcissism types, intense celebrity worship independently predicted these criminal thinking styles.
“Intense, obsessive celebrity worship (the highest levels) is not merely harmless fandom,” they added. “It was only the extreme, obsessive, and borderline-pathological levels of celebrity worship that tended to align with problematic traits and cognitive styles.” They concluded that “a person’s relationship with celebrities, especially when the relationship is borderline pathological, can be deeply tied to their underlying personality traits and cognitive patterns.”
“Readers should note that the correlations between celebrity worship and criminal thinking styles range from weak to moderate, with the strongest associations emerging at the highest, most obsessive levels of celebrity worship,” the authors said. “In our regression models, the combination of celebrity worship levels and narcissism subtypes accounted for 13% to 30% of the variance across various criminal thinking categories. While these effects demonstrate a meaningful statistical relationship, they also indicate that these psychological traits exist as part of a larger, highly complex web of factors that may influence criminal thinking.”
The researchers caution that the study’s cross-sectional design cannot determine cause and effect. They note the possibility that vulnerable narcissism drives celebrity obsession, but also that extreme parasocial relationships could alter self-perception and attitudes toward social rules.
To address this, they say their long-term aim is to move toward longitudinal research that can map developmental pathways and assess whether narcissism drives criminal thinking through celebrity worship.
Limitations also include the sample: all participants were college students, a group that may not reflect the broader public or those with criminal justice histories. The team says future work should examine populations with prior offending and consider self-control as a moderating factor.
The study, Celebrity Worship, Narcissism, and Criminal Thinking Styles, was authored by Joshua L. Williams, Leanne Confer, Madeleine Krueger and Lawrence Locker Jr.
