We’re not just escaping thoughts of debt, boredom, and general disappointment in life by focusing on celebrities instead of our problems – we’re getting a taste of immortality too, according to a recent study. Researchers at the University of Illinois found that when people thought about their death, they gave higher estimates for how long that they thought various dead and living celebrities would be remembered. The assumption is that people who identify with and study famous people are somehow hoping they’ll live on in the hearts and minds of others too. By finding that celebrities are just like us, we hope to live on beyond our earthly boundaries as well. Psychologists say it’s a healthy way to cope with fear of death. This article is kind of worded confusingly, but I think I get the gist.

According to “terror management theory,” much of our anxieties and motivations emerge from an existential terror of the nothingness that comes after death. Dozens of studies show that activating thoughts of death (increasing “mortality salience”), even subconsciously, leads us to grasp for meaning and structure in the world by, say, identifying with and endorsing authorities or social groups or cultural mores that will survive our own demise. Because then a part of our essential self–our beliefs and values–will carry on in some form outside our worm-baiting bodies.

Pelin Kesebir and Chi-Yue Chiu at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who presented their research at the 2008 meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, found that after people thought about their own deaths, their estimates of how long various living and dead celebrities would be remembered increased. And the magnitude of the increase for each famous person was related to how representative of American values people considered them. If you’re preoccupied with leaving your mark on the world, and someone famous embodies your beliefs, you peg your legacy on his or her legacy.

In another study, people thought a plane was less likely to crash when it carried a celeb who represented their cultural values. And the more iconic the person, the greater his protective force on the plane, even after controlling for how much the subjects liked or respected the person. We unintentionally convince ourselves that symbols of our identity approach immortality not just figuratively but literally.

In a third study, also unpublished, subjects imagined an encounter with Oprah Winfrey (a figure Kesebir and Chiu dub “quisi-immortal”) at a Chicago coffee shop. Those with death on the mind pictured the experience as being more pleasant than others did.

Is celebrity obsession unhealthy? “We all need these buffers,” Kesebir says. “Famous people can serve as inspirational figures. They can provide the kind of existential stamina. They can show that you yourself can become immortal. So they’re in a way what’s best about a culture. They can serve as compasses. I don’t think that’s unhealthy.”

[From Blogs.psychologytoday.com via WeSmirch]

You’re not procrastinating at work – you’re making yourself feel better so you can do your work and not get too bummed out by the reality of our existence. We can at least spend some time looking at the beautiful rich people and dreaming that we’ll be young, lovely and immortal in our way too. This is the best justification for my career that I’ve heard all week.