Parasocial Relationships

• Parasocial relationships are one-sided relationships where the people in the relationship are heavily invested but the other person really has no idea who they are.
• Examples of parasocial relationships include celebrities and their fans, brands and their customers, fictional characters and their readers, and teachers and their students.
• Parasocial relationships can happen in any scenario where the interaction is mostly one-sided.
• People develop parasocial relationships to try and make up for deficits in their real life relationships.
• Parasocial relationships can start to feel addictive and individuals go through more and more intense stages as their craving builds.
• The levels of parasocial relationships are classified on a scale called the celebrity attitude scale developed by McCutcheon and Mark B.
• The levels of parasocial relationships are: entertainment social, intense personal, and borderline pathological.
• Parasocial relationships can serve a function for those who are lonely, as evidenced by a study that suggests that parasocial relationships are often taken on by those who are feeling excessively lonely.
• The celebrity may be trying to find videos on YouTube about their personal life to learn more about their life.
• The celebrity's behaviors will become more extreme as they absorb more information about their personal life.
• There is no link between attachment type and the chances of developing parasocial relationships, according to a study of 299 participants.
• The quality of romantic relationships can be affected by parasocial relationships, as evidenced by a study that found a high correlation between people's score on the Celebrity Attitude Scale and the likelihood of having troubled, anxious, and poor quality relationships.
• Parasocial relationships can lead to social dysfunction, as evidenced by a study that showed a correlation between high depression and anxiety scores and high scores on the Entertainment Socialisation Level of Parasocial Relationships scale.
• Children with an insecure resistant type are most at risk of developing pathological parasocial relationships, according to Bowlby's attachment theory.
• People move up the levels of parasocial relationships one at a time.
• The entertainment social level is where celebrities are discussed around the office or with friends or family for entertainment and distraction reasons.
• The intense personal level is where the individual is having constant obsessive thoughts and maybe starting to get some intense emotions about thinking about the celebrity.
• The borderline pathological level is where the individual is starting to display some quite extreme completely uncontrollable behavior towards the celebrity such as stalking behavior.
• The absorption addiction model explains why people engage in parasocial relationships as a way to escape from the reality of their lives.
• The absorption aspect of parasocial relationships involves associating yourself with a celebrity closely in some way to absorb some of the positive aspects of their lives.