Parasocial relationships

• Parasocial relationships are unreciprocated relationships often with a celebrity in which a fan spends a large amount of commitment and emotional energy into somebody they have never met
• The celebrity attitude scale (Giles and Mautby 2006) suggests 3 types of parasocial relationships; entertainment, intense personal, and borderline pathological
• The celebrity attitude scale (Giles and Mautby 2006) entertainment; the parasocial relationship is a source of entertainment and gossip with others
• The celebrity attitude scale (Giles and Mautby 2006) intense personal; the individual begins to see the celebrity as someone they admire or even a soul mate
• The celebrity attitude scale (Giles and Mautby 2006) borderline pathological; the individual displays intense worshipping behaviour
• The Absorption Addiction model (McCutcheon 2002) shows people form parasocial relationships if they have a deficit in real world relationships as it allows them to escape reality and find the fulfilment they cannot achieve in real life
• Absorption addiction model (McCutcheon 2002) absorption; observing and learning more about the parasocial relationship to seek a sort of fulfilment that is not achieved in real world relationships
• Absorption addiction model (McCutcheon 2002) addiction; becoming overly obsessed with the parasocial relationship and needing to sustain commitment by gaining stronger and closer involvement causing extreme behaviour to maintain this one sided obsession
• Bowlby's (1958) theory of maternal deprivation would suggest that maternal deprivation causes a higher likelihood parasocial relationships will develop as it causes damage to the internal working model so the individual does not have a healthy template of how a relationship should be
• Ainsworth (1974) finds insecure resistant are more likely to develop parasocial relationships as they form attachments to others more easily
• Parasocial relationships strength; Mautby (2003) linked personality types with levels of parasocial relationships (Extravert with Entertainment, neurotic with intense personal, and psychotic with borderline pathological) showing how different individuals form different types of parasocial relationships
• Parasocial relationships strength; Mautby (2005) found a correlation between poor body image and intense celebrity worship in teenage girls showing people with a deficit in confidence are more likely to form parasocial relationships HOWEVER this study is only correlational
• Parasocial relationships weakness; McCutcheon (2006) found no correlation between insecure resistant attachment and parasocial relationships across 229 cases of celebrity worship