Why people collect celebrity memorabilia
In 2012, the boyband One Direction appeared on an Australian breakfast TV show, Sunrise. While they were there, they were offered various Australian foods including, as far as I can tell from this clip, TimTams, Caramello Koalas, Vegemite on toast, and what looks like a beef pie (thank you to my Australian friend Hannah for helping me to identify these foods). Niall Horan tried the Vegemite on toast, hated it, and threw the remainder back on the plate. Later, someone sold the bitten toast on eBay.
God, I love Vegemite.
How much do you think the bidding got up to?
I wish I could tell you the correct answer is, “Zero, because why would anyone want someone else’s leftover toast,” but I cannot, because it got to at least AU$100,000.
This is not a one-off. An acrylic nail belonging to Lady Gaga sold for US$12,000. Britney Spears’ used chewing gum went for US$14,000. Scarlett Johansson herself auctioned off her used tissue for US$5,300 (though she did donate the money to charity).
Perhaps, like me, you went “What the heck is up with that?!” when you learned these things. Well, good news: I know approximately what the heck is up, and I am going to tell you.
Celebrities are contagious (just like the rest of us)
Paying vast sums of money for things that have been in contact with celebrities is an excellent example of the strange behaviours that can result from the contagion principle. In sum, this is a kind of magical thinking that says that when two things have been in contact, they become permanently connected in some way. The contagion principle occurs in multiple different cultures (though it may lead to different behaviours in different places) and underlies quite a few beliefs, such as...
Other people are a source of positive contagion. This explains why people will pay lots of money for celebrities’ discards, but also why companies tell us when a product is hand-made – we can perceive direct human involvement in manufacture as making the end product more ‘natural’ than a process which is entirely carried out by machines. Interestingly, people who gave high approval ratings to Barack Obama were also willing to pay more for prints of the iconic HOPE poster with a low serial number, which suggests this kind of positive contagion can also work on a metaphorical level as well as a literal one.
Other people are a source of negative contagion. Yes, this is at direct odds with other people being a source of positive contagion. I don’t have an answer for you other than humans are inconsistent. Anyway, for example, car dealers tend to offer ex-showroom models at a lower price than new models, even if the ex-showroom model has never been driven and is in perfect condition – probably because, even before the COVID-19 pandemic, we believed that others ‘contaminate’ objects by touching them.
We ourselves can have a contagious effect on objects. For example, some people get uncomfortable at the idea of someone they don’t like having possession of something they used to own or have as part of their body, even if it’s something they wouldn’t want back and which would never be reunited with them, like fingernail clippings. This same study also found that some people feel uncomfortable at the idea of a poor person wearing their old clothes, to which I can only say: WTF.
So… why do many people have this kind of contagion belief?
Explaining the contagion principle
I don’t collect celebrity memorabilia, but I do keep mementos. Those currently in my possession include:
a print of a human figure
several finger-paintings
a silly cartoon that I drew, and
a loop of black cord with five extremely worn plastic beads on it.
Let’s have a look at a few different explanations for the contagion principle using these objects. I will tell you now that I am not really sure which, if any, of the explanations is correct, but we can still have some fun going through them.
Explanation 1:
Interesting history
The print is from a performance by my good friends and collaborators at BitterSuite. They normally do multisensory concerts in person, but the pandemic stopped that, so they found a way for people to do one of their concerts at home by sending them a box of props including the print.
I’ve held onto it partly because it’s beautiful and partly because I think it is an interesting piece of history – a reminder of positive event in a (hopefully) uniquely horrible time.
Items which are rare can fetch a lot of money (see Niall Horan’s toast), so there’s clearly a possible monetary benefit. But this print, though relatively rare, is unlikely to fetch a lot of money – it’s valuable to me and other people who were involved, but probably not to anyone else. An object having this kind of deeply personal value to some people but not others is something that even very young children can understand, though it seems to be something we pick up from the adults around us rather than something inherent to human beings.
Association is a good explanation of positive contagion, but what about negative contagion? Though I’m sure some people like to collect items that have broad historical value because of their association with horrible events, I don’t think it holds up for items that have specific, personal associations with horrible events. I’ve yet to meet someone who’s said something like, “Ah yes, I held on to this cork because it’s from the bottle of wine I drank immediately before I fell out of a tree and broke my shoulder” unless that is subsequently followed by something more like, “… and that’s how I met my spouse, they’re a paramedic.”
For a better understanding of negative contagion, we’ll have to turn to other theories.
Explanation 2:
Association
The finger paintings were made by my friends during my leaving party when I moved from Amsterdam to London. Here they are being made…
Every time I look at them, I think not only of that event, but of all the other joyful times I had with those friends. This is a perfect example of the association explanation of contagion: I keep these things simply because they bring good memories to mind. To make this explanation work for negative contagion, simply flip the type of association from positive to negative – for example, if you have a disastrous job interview you might cringe every time you look at the outfit you wore that day.
However, this explanation probably isn’t correct. If it were true, you would expect that cleaning an object with a negative association would make no difference to that association – it’s still the same object, right? – but that’s not actually the case.
OK then, let’s try another theory.
Explanation 3:
Social communication
The cartoon is of me and my best friend, and it commemorates the time we tested whether it was possible to use paraffin as a substitute for hair removal wax (answer: no). This particular cartoon is one of a number I drew in my early 20s, at a time when I kept a kind of visual diary of things that had happened each day. I still have the diary, but only this cartoon has made it into a picture frame. Why? Probably because it’s the only one with all of my best friend in it (her other appearance is… somewhat obscured by sheep).
So, here’s the theory of social communication: by interacting with a positively or negatively contaminated object, we imply something about ourselves to others. In displaying this drawing, I am communicating several things about myself to anyone who happens to see it – I am a creative person, I have friends, this friend is particularly special to me. If I’d told you it was a signed picture of Donald Trump, I’d be sending some very different messages – ones that are untrue of me and which might make you view me negatively.
Is this theory correct? Maybe not. Here’s a study in which participants were asked to imagine carrying out various actions bare-handed or with gloves, with a shirt previously worn by Hitler, and to rate how pleasant they’d find those actions. If the social communication theory is correct, what should matter is what the action says to others – ripping the shirt would signal disapproval of Hitler, while just holding it would signal approval – but in fact it was the directness of contact with the shirt that had the most weight. No matter what the action was, participants said being bare-handed was more negative than wearing gloves.
The problem with this (other than the researchers’ apparent assumption that no Nazis were taking part in the study, which is sadly not guaranteed) is that ripping involves a lot more interaction with a shirt than just holding it. Maybe people wanted to minimise the amount of time they spent holding a Hitler shirt – which brings us to the final theory I’m going to cover.
Explanation 4:
Essentialist contagion
The cord is relatively new, but the beads on it are old – I’ve had them since I was 14. They come from a summer camp I attended that year, and though my school had a no-jewellery policy, I wore them secretly under my shirt until the original cord broke.
I was bullied for most of the time that I was at that school and the beads were a constant reminder that things at summer camp were very different and much happier, almost like a protective amulet. And that’s the key to the theory of essentialist contagion: I believed that some aspect of the events at summer camp had become embedded in the beads. Though the circumstances of my life are now much better, I still believe just a little bit in the protective power of the beads, so I will never throw them away.
According to this explanation, the same kind of thing is going on when a loved or hated person touches an object. Somehow, we believe, a bit of that person’s essence is now permanently embedded in that object – to the extent that the more contact a piece of memorabilia has had with a well-liked celebrity (and the less it’s had with a disliked celebrity), the more people are willing to pay for it at an auction.
Give me the summary, please
Like I said, I don’t know if any of these theories is correct. Possibly different ones are at work in different circumstances, and it may be that negative contagion and positive contagion are each explained best by their own theory rather than one all-encompassing contagion theory explaining it all.
Hold on to your celebrity memorabilia – doing so is pretty harmless and may make you some money if you later decide you want to part with it – but be aware that there’s a dark side to contagion beliefs.
Discrimination against people who have HIV or AIDS is pretty common and has some nasty outcomes including poverty and being barred from accessing healthcare. Some of this discrimination appears as things like reluctance to buy houses which previously belonged to people who have AIDS. Sound familiar? This is negative contagion at work – partly driven by misinformation and mistrust in medical information on how HIV transmission works and partly driven by homophobia, since AIDS is sometimes wrongly perceived as a disease that only affects men who have sex with men. So, if you find yourself reluctant to use something previously touched by another person, it’s worth asking yourself why.