A03

• Strength: research support for the absorption-addiction model?


  • Maltby et al (2005) - studied female adolescents who reported an intense personal rel with a female celeb whose body shape they admired - these females tended to have a poor body image
  • Linked the entertainment-social level with extravert personality traits, the intense-personal category with neurotic traits and the borderline pathological level with psychotic personality types
  • Both studies support the model - shows a correlation between the level of celeb worship or disorder psychological functioning
• Strength: attachment explanations is cross-cultural support?


  • Schmid and Klimmt (2001): found similar levels of parasocial attachment to Harry Potter in individualistic culture and a collectivistic culture
  • This tendency isn't culturally specific
  • Suggests: the need to form parasocial rels may be universal and innate and may be an adaptive behaviour
• Limitation: Absorption-addiction model is it lack explanatory power?


  • Model describes the characteristics of people at different levels of intensity but doesn't explain why the different forms develop
  • This doesn't help us to prevent the dangerous and disturbing forms of parasocial rels
  • Model is limited in its explanatory power and its application for supporting people whose celeb worship has become problematic
• Limitation: Link to attachment theory is lack of support?

  • McCutcheon et al (2006): found that Ps with insecure attachments were no more likely to form parasocial rel with celebs than Ps with secure attachment styles
  • Key assumption of this explanation and failure to find support for it raises crucial questions about the explanations validity
  • Limitation of using attachment theory to explain parasocial rel because it shows that it has little predictive strength
• Limitation: Methodological issues limit the validity of the research?


  • Most of the research studies use self-report techniques to collect data - these can be affected by forms of bias for examples social desirability bias
  • Most of the studies also use correlational analysis, despite strong correlations between celeb worship and body image casual links can't be made
  • There's no evidence to show that parasocial rel are caused by specific experiences