Celebrity Recommender

This paper presents both a rationale and a pilot study for using celebrities to present computer generated content recommendations. The rationale explores how people's parasocial relationships with celebrities influence decision-making. The pilot study examines if celebrity presentation of recommendations influences subjects' qualitative assessment of a recommender. Statistical tests on a small sample indicate that the use of a celebrity did not significantly enhance users’ perceptions of a recommender. However, the results suggest that influence between same-sex and cross-sex matches of subjects and celebrities should be further explored.