Celebrity worship affects estimation of psychological distance by high level of perceptual construal

The study tries to test whether celebrity worship behaviors affect egocentric estimation of psychological distance, including spatial distance and social distance, which may be mediated by high level of perceptual construal. Celebrity worship behaviors, from compensatory and complementary perspectives, are driven by social needs or function in social aspects. Besides, it is widely accepted that parasocial relationship is a kind of close attachment, functioning as authentic relationship. Recently, researches in the area focus on intimate fantasy, framed as a main feature of parasocial relationship. Because intimate fantasy fits hypothetical dimension of psychological distance, it is reasonable to propose that favorite idol is hypothetically psychological distant to fans. It is important to know whether psychological distances will be affected by parasocial relationship and how idol related information mentally construed by fans. Level of perceptual construal, which is operationalized as global processing versus local processing, is being tested as mediator between fan behaviors and estimation of psychological distance. Unlike previous researches which focus on health influences of fan behaviors, this study views it as an ability development of construal psychological distant object. Besides, the increasing estimation of psychological distance to close others could be seen as “side effects” of psychological vision since it’s getting broader during adolescence and early adulthood. The study may provide a new perspective of social cognition for understanding fans behaviors and find the transition point of adolescents’ social cognition development.