parasocial relationships

• Parasocial relationships is a relationship where one person is attracted to another person (usually a celebrity), but the target individual is usually unaware if the existence of the person who created the relationship e.g between a celebrity and a fan.
• Entertainent- social ( least intense) 

  most people engage in parasocial relationships at some point in their life. Fans are attracted to their chosen celebrity because of their ability to entertain and be source of gossip and something to discuss with other people. E.g discuss love island with people at school. CAS; learning the life story of my celebrity it lots of fun 
• Intense-personal

  intense and compulsive feelings about the celebrity. Obsessive tendencies. Share thoughts with others who feel the same way. Interest in their personal life- clothes, hair, food they like e.g my celebrity is my soulmate 
• Borderline pathological

  Uncontrollable behaviours and fantasies about their celebrity. May play to spend a large amount of money to see that person or perform an illegal act, e.g stalking 

  E.g if I walked through the door of my fave celebrity’s house, he would be happy to see me. 
• Attachment theory explanation:

  Ainsworth: suggests that individuals who formed insecure-resistant relationships with their caregiver in early childhood will be more likely to form parasocial relationships, as they are too afraid of the criticisms and rejection that are part of real life relationships. Her findings in strange situation study- insecure resistant children were very clingy in to their mothers, showed less explorative behaviour than children of other types, as they don’t feel safe enough to leave a parent, and showed great distress when their mothers left the room. 
• Attachment theory explanation:

  John Bowlby: predicts that individuals who didn’t form a strong bond with a primary caregiver in early childhood will try to find an attachment substitute as adults, and engaging in parasocial relationships allows them to do so.
• Attachment theory explanation:

  Hazan and shaver: this behaviour translates into clingy and jealous behaviour in adulthood, making it difficult for such people to develop committed and lasting romantic relationships. Intensive celebrity worship allows them to engage in fantasy about the perfect relationship, without heartbreak and rejection.
• The absorption-addiction model. McCutcheon

  Absorption: become preoccupied with the celebrity and focus their attention on them as far as possible. Identity with them.,occurs when people have a deficiency in their life,e.g they can’t form an intimate relationships in real life. Allows them to feel fulfilment and excitement and a sense of identity. 
• The absorption-addiction model. McCutcheon

  Addiction- this sense of fulfilment from absorption then becomes addictive for the person, leading them to engage in more risky behaviour such as staking, in order to get mentally and sometimes physically, closer to the celebrity they worship. 

  Moving from absorption to addiction a personal crisis in someone’s life may lead them to need to escape so they move into the intense personal and the borderline pathological where addiction occurs. 
• A strength of parasocial relationships is that it has cross cultural evidence. A study used an online questionnaire in a collectivist culture (Mexico) and individualist culture (Germany) and found similar levels of parasocial attachment to characters in Harry Potter. Thus suggests the explanation is universal and can explain parasocial relationships in all cultures. 
• A weakness of the parasocial relationship is that there is a lack of support for attachment theory. McCutcheon et al examined the correlation between attachment types and celebrity worship levels using 229 pps, and found no link between insecure resistant attachment and more intense level of parasocial relationships. This contradicts the claim made by the attachment theory explanations and suggests that there is no link between attachment type and parasocial relationships.
• A strength of parasocial relationships is practical applications. Maltby (2003) linked types of personality (extravert, psychotic and neurotic) to levels of parasocial relationships. found that extraverts more likely to be entertainment social level, neurotics at the intense-personal level and the psychotics at the boarder line pathological level, supporting the absorption-addiction model. suggests that research into parasocial relationships can be used to improve professionals understanding of psychological disorders and help people struggling with psychological disorders. 
•  Weakness of parasocial relationships is that there are methodological problems because studies rely heavily on self-report methods such as interviews and questionnaires. These methods may not reflect true picture, as pps may want to answer in a way that reflects them in a better light (social desirability bias) and may not respond truthfully to the questions. This means that the reasons for developing parasocial relationships may be different from the ones uncovered by research, which lowers the validity of these explanations, making them less applicable to real life.