AO3

• Research into parasocial relationships has useful applications. Maltby linked types of personality (extravert, psychotic and neurotic) to levels of parasocial relationships. He found that extraverts were more likely to be at the entertainment-social level, neurotics at the intense-personal level and psychotics at the borderline-pathological level, supporting the absorption-addiction model. This suggests that research into parasocial relationships can be used to improve professionals' understanding of psychological disorders and help people struggling with psychological disorders.
• There is a lack of support for attachment theory explanations. McCutcheon et al examined the correlation between attachment type and celebrity worship levels using 229 participants, and found no link between insecure-resistant attachment and more intense levels of parasocial relationships. This contradicts the claim made by attachment theory explanations and suggests that there is no link between attachment type and parasocial
• However, most research into celebrity worship/parasocial relationships is correlational. This means that cause and effect cannot be clearly established, lowering the scientific explanatory power. For example, while a significant correlation was found between poor body image and intensive celebrity worship in teenage girls, this does not mean, however, that intense celebrity worship causes poor body image. It may as well be that girls who already have a poor body image tend to engage in a more intensive level of parasocial relationships to enhance their self-esteem.
• A strength is that there is supporting evidence for the absorption addiction model. Maltby et al. studied teenagers who had an intense personal relationship with a female celebrity whose body shape they admired. They found that the female adolescents had a poor body image and suggested absorption addiction may contribute to development of an eating disorder. This shows that there is a correlation between levels of parasocial relationship and poor psychological functioning.