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Fans

Exploring Expressed Motivations for Contacting Celebrities

University of California, Santa Barbara

Gavin De Becker

Gavin de Becker, Inc.

Howard Giles

University of California, Santa Barbara

Social psychological studies of language cover a wide range of research domains, most of which ignore written communication to societally visible figures. Toward ameliorating this, the authors focus on letters written to Hollywood celebrities. The authors'goal is to extend the 1991 research of Dietz et al. that has examined threatening and inappropriate letters to entertainment celebrities. The authors present a comparative view by investigating the features of normal fan behavior. A total of 294 university students were asked to express their motivations for contacting celebrities. Next, 83 fan letters received by one Hollywood celebrity were content analyzed in terms of the senders' motivations for writing. The authors compared the university students' rationale to the ones articulated in the actual letters and also compared the latter with characteristics found in Dietz et al. `s more sinister sample. Finally, a case study of one fan is undertaken to illustrate how distinguishing between a sycophantic fan and the obsessed unwanted pursuer poses a challenging task.

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