Levels of Parasocial relationships Flashcards
What did Giles and Maltby (2006) do?
identified three levels of parasocial relationships that a person may experience, using the Celebrity Attitude Scale (CAS) in a large-scale study
What are the 3 levels?
-entertainment-social
-Intense-personal
-Borderline pathological
What is entertainment-social?
-The least intense level of parasocial relationships
• At this level, the person keeps up with their celebrity and finds out information about them for the purpose of entertainment and fuel for social interaction.
•Most people engage in parasocial relationships at some point in their lives, but most stay at the first level.
What is intense-personal?
The intermediate level of parasocial relationships
• The person has private obsessions and feelings of personnel connection for the celebrity.
Formexample, referring to a celebrity as a ‘soul-mate’.
• They have an intense interest in the celebrity’s personal life, such as their dress sense, food they like and entertainment in which they take part.
• This type of parasocial relationship is typical for teenagers who seem to be obsessed with every little detail of their favourite celebrity’s lifestyle.
What is borderline pathological?
-The strongest level of parasocial relationships
• This is where the person has over-identified with the celebrity and their fantasies and behaviour may have become uncontrollable and extreme.
• For example, they may engage in illegal activities such as stalking and spend large sums of money to obtain memorabilia
• It is also usual for people to believe that if only they were given a chance to meet their favourite celebrity in person, their feelings would be reciprocated
How are the absorption addiction model and the three levels of parasocial relationships linked?
The absorption addiction model has close ties to the three levels of parasocial relationships
What happens when a person is in the absorption stage of the model?
they are engaging in the second
level of parasocial relationships (intense personal).
They engage in celebrity worship that gradually worsens or gets more intense.
What happens if this obsession becomes addictive?
they enter the third level (borderline pathological) of parasocial relationships, engaging in intense obsession, entertaining unrealistic thoughts and fantasies and potentially extreme behaviours such as stalking.
