Following the rich and famous A daily diary study on adolescents' cognitive, affective, and physiological engagement with positive and negative celebrity content

Most adolescents follow celebrity rumors daily. This study used a daily diary method to focus on adolescents' (14-18 years old) regular engagement with celebrity content. Cognitive (attitudes of acceptability), affective (neutral feelings), and physiological (arousal) transitions in adolescents' engagement were tracked and analyzed across a period of seven weeks and under contrasting conditions (positive/negative). More specifically, adolescents were asked questions seven times about self-selected celebrity items that they considered positive or negative. After seven weeks, we tested whether these transitions were related to their responses to a case of negative celebrity news. The results indicated that adolescents who focused on negative celebrity news showed a decrease in neutral responses to celebrity news, meaning that their emotional responses became more intense over time. This can be interpreted as a sensitization effect. The transition in emotional engagement was not significantly related to their responses in the post-measurement test, meaning that adolescents did not translate their less neutral feelings into their future expressions about celebrity news items. No significant changes were reported in the cognitive (attitudes of acceptability) and physiological (arousal) levels over time. For the positive condition, the intensity of the adolescents' engagement remained constant.