Normative Influence of the Stars: The Relative Indirect Effects of Celebrity Exemplars on Vaping Norm Perceptions Through Liking, Parasocial Relationship Strength, and Wishful Identification.

Although the influence of celebrities on public health-related attitudes and behaviors is well established, the specific role that celebrity examples play in shaping health-related social norm perceptions is not well understood. To examine the effect of celebrities on social norm perceptions, young adults were randomly assigned to read news articles about vaping that either featured one of four film stars using a vape pen or did not contain any celebrity exemplar. The presence or absence of a celebrity exemplar did not affect readers' perceptions of vaping social norms.