para-social relationship

• parasocial relationship

  one sided relationships
• levels of para-social relationships

  Maltby et al.

  • entertainment social: celebrity is a source of gossip
  • intense-personal: intensive feeling towards celebrity
  • borderline-pathological: uncontrollable behaviours/fantasies
• McCutcheon et al.


  • created celebrity attitude scale (CAS)
  • this was used by Maltby in a large-scale study and from these results, they developed the levels of parasocial relationships.
• the absorption addiction model

  developed by McCutcheon to explain how parasocial relationships become abnormal.

  • allows them to escape from reality
• absorption


  seeking fulfilment through celebrity worship drives an individual to intensely focus on the celebrity, become preoccupied with their life and identify closely with them.
• addiction


  like an addiction, increasing 'doses' of celebrity worship can lead to extreme behaviours and delusional beliefs such as stalking due to imagined mutual feelings.
• attachment theory explanation of parasocial relationship

  • insecure resistant
  • insecure avoidant
  • secure attachment
• insecure resistent


  • most likely to form parasocial relationship
  • they have concern that others will not reciprocate their desire for intimacy so they turn to tv characters to unfulfilled needs met.
• insecure avoidant


  • least likely to form parasocial relationship
  • they find it difficult to develop relationships and therefore are very unlikely to seek them for real or fictional people.
• secure attachment


  • not likely to form parasocial relationship
  • often have satisfactory real-life relationships and do not seek additional relationship with a celebrity.
• research support for levels

  The level's predictive validity is supported by McCutcheon who found that higher levels of parasocial relationships predict anxiety in intimate relationships, confirming the model's classification of celebrity worshippers.
• Support for absorption addiction model

  Maltby found that girls with intense-personal parasocial relationships with admired celebrities has poor body image, supporting the addiction absorption model's link between poor psychological functioning and parasocial relationships.
• universal tendency


  Dinkha et al found that insecure attatchment predicts intense parasocial relationships across both collectivist and individualist cultures, supporting attachment theory as a universal explanation for the desire to form parasocial relationships.
• counterpoint

  McCutcheon found no link between attachment types and parasocial relationships, suggesting they don't necessarily compensate for attachment issues.