Parasocial relationships

• Levels of parasocial relationships

  • McCutcheon et al created the celebrity attitudes scale used by Maltby et al:

  1. Entertainment-social
  2. Intense-personal
  3. Borderline pathological
• Levels of parasocial relationships - 1. Entertainment-social

  • Least intense level
  • Celebs viewed as sources of entertainment or fuel for social interaction
• Levels of parasocial relationships - 2. Intense-personal

  • Intermediate level
  • Greater personal involvement
• Levels of parasocial relationships - 3. Borderline pathological

  • Strongest level of celebrity worship
  • Uncontrollable fantasies and extreme behaviours
  • Spending large money on a celebrity-related object
  • Willing to perform an illegal act due to what celeb says
• The absorption-addition model - McCutcheon

  • Tendency to form parasocial relationships due to deficiencies people have in their own lives
  • Poorly adjusted psychologically - Escape from reality or fulfilment they cannot achieve from actual relationships
  • Initially entertainment-social may be triggered into a more intense involvement by a personal crisis or stressful life event
• The absorption-addition model - Two components

  Absorption:

  • Seeking fulfilment in celeb worship motivates the individual to focus their attention on celeb
  • Become pre-occupied in their existence and identify with them

  Addiction:

  • Need to sustain their commitment to celeb by feeling stronger and closer involvement with celeb
  • Leads to extreme behaviour and delusional thinking
• The attachment theory explanation

  • Tendency to form PR in adolescence and adulthood - Attachment difficulties in early childhood
  • Bowlby's attachment theory - Early difficulties may lead to emotional troubles later

  Ainsworth:

  • Insecure-resistant - Form PR as adults - Need to have unfulfilled needs met with no threat of rejection or disappointment in comparison to real-life relationships
  • Insecure-avoidant - Prefer to avoid the pain and rejection of relationships all together
• Evaluation of parasocial relationships - Problems with attachment theory

  • McCutcheon et al: Measured attachment types and celeb attitudes in under 300 ppts
  • Findings - Ppts with insecure attachments - No more likely to form parasocial relationships with celebs than those with secure attachments
  • Fails to support a central prediction of attachment

  Limitation: Brings validity of theory into question
• Evaluation of parasocial relationships - Support for the absorption-addition model

  Maltby et al:

  • Investigated link with celeb worship and body image with teens

  Findings - Females:

  • Intense-personal parasocial relationship with a female celeb who's body shape they admired
  • Had a poor body image
  • May be a link between anorexia nervosa

  Confirm prediction of correlation between the level of celeb worship and poor psychological functioning

  Strength: Supports validity of the theory
• Evaluation of parasocial relationships - Problems with the absorption-addition model

  • Criticised for being a description of parasocial relations than explanation
  • E.g. model is capable of describing characteristics of ppl who are most absorbed by and addicted to a celebrity
  • Does not explain development

  Limitation: Lacks application