Why do people fall in love with celebrities?

“When we care about someone ― even a celebrity ― they feel like an extension of ourselves, so good things happening to them feels good and bad things happening to them feels bad,” Shira Gabriel, an associate professor of psychology at the University at Buffalo in the U.S., told HuffPost.

Fans have the illusion of a face-to-face relationship with these people in the spotlight. The phenomenon was first identified in 1956, when social scientists Donald Horton and R. Richard Wohl observed American audiences’ associations with television shows, and noted these associations were similar to a real-life social relationships.