Parasocial relationships

• Parasocial relationships:

  • Parasocial relationships are one-sided relationships, usually with a celebrity, where the celebrity is unaware of the existence of the person who has created the relationship
• Levels of parasocial relationships:

  • Maltby et al. (2006) used the Celebrity Attitude Scale in a large-scale survey. From this, they identified three levels of parasocial relationships, each level describing attitudes and behaviours linked to more extreme forms of celebrity worship:

  1. Entertainment-social 

  • The least intense level of celebrity worship. Fans are attracted to a favourite celebrity for entertainment purposes and for gossip and interaction with friends (e.g. ‘Learning the life of my favourite celebrity is a lot of fun’.)
• Levels of parasocial relationships:

  2) Intense-personal

  • This is an intermediate level which reflects greater personal involvement in a parasocial relationship with a celebrity. The fan may have frequent obsessive thoughts and intense feelings about the celebrity. (e.g. ‘I consider my favourite celebrity to be a soul-mate’.)

  3) Borderline-pathological

  • This is the strongest level of celebrity worship. It features uncontrollable behaviours and fantasies about the celebrity (e.g. ‘If my favourite celebrity asked me to do something illegal, I would do it for them.’
• The Absorption-Addiction Model:

  • McCutcheon (2002) explains that parasocial relationships form because of deficiencies individuals have in their own lives or their poor psychological health.
  • A parasocial relationships allows them to escape from reality and gives them a sense of identity. It makes up for deficits in their real life
  • It can also allow them to find fulfilment that they can’t achieve in their actual relationships
• The Absorption- addiction model:

  • Someone who initially has an entertainment-social level of parasocial relationship may be triggered into more intense involvement by some personal crisis or stressful life event
  • The absorption-addiction model has two components:
  • Absorption: the individual seeks fulfilment and an escape from reality through celebrity worship and so focuses their attention as far as possible on the celebrity. This allows them to become pre-occupied in the celeb’s existence and allows them to identify with the celeb
• Two components:

  • Addiction: just like addiction to drugs, the individual needs to keep up their commitment to the relationship by feeling a stronger and closer involvement with their celebrity. This may lead to more extreme behaviours and delusional thinking. This means they escalate from the entertainment-social level to more extreme stages
• The Attachment Theory Explanation:

  • Psychologists suggest that attachment difficulties in childhood could lead to tendencies to form parasocial relationships in adolescence and adulthood
  • Bowlby’s attachment theory suggests that early attachment difficulties may lead to emotional troubles later in life
  • Insecure-resistant types are most likely to form parasocial relationships as adults
  • This is because parasocial relationships meet their unfulfilled needs without the threat of rejection, break-up and disappointment that real-life relationships bring
• AO3:

  • A strength of the absorption addiction model is that there is much research to support it 
  • For example, Maltby et al. (2005) studied females who had an intense-personal parasocial relationship with a female celebrity whose body shape they admired    
  • These females tended to have a poor body image, which is linked to anorexia. 
  • This supports the absorption-addiction model because it confirms the idea that there is a correlation between celebrity worship and poor psychological functioning
• AO3:

  • A limitation of the attachment theory explanation of parasocial relationships is that not all research supports it.
  • For example, McCutcheon et al. (2006) found that participants with insecure attachments were no more likely to form parasocial relationships with celebrities than participants with secure attachments
  • This finding fails to support a central prediction of the attachment theory, undermining its validity
• AO3:

  • A major limitation of research into parasocial relationships (e.g. the absorption addiction model or attachment theory) is that it relies heavily on self-report measures
  • For example, online questionnaires are often used to collect data about feelings and behaviours towards celebrities
  • This is a problem because participants may respond to quite personal questions in a way which that they think makes them look better
  • Therefore, much of the research into parasocial relationships may lack validity due to social desirability bias
• AO3:

  • One limitation of the absorption-addiction model is that it doesn’t explain parasocial relationships, it only describes them
  • For example, the model describes the characteristics of people who are most absorbed/addicted to celebrities but doesn’t go into much detail about how such characteristics develop
  • This means that the model lacks validity because it is not a full explanation of parasocial relationships