Parasocial relationships Flashcards
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Parasocial relationship
an attraction to a celebrity where the fan knows all about the celebrity but the celebrity doesnt even know the fan exists
* they can occur in anyone at any tyoe of age but seems to be more common during adolescence
* men are more likely to develop parasocial relationships with sports personalities, whereas females are more likely to develop them with entertainment celebrities
* people with a lower level of education are more likely to develop parasocial relationships with celebrities
Celebrity Attitude Scale
CAS
* McCutheon et al (2002) developed it as a measure of parasocial relationships
level of parasocial relationships
- Entertainment -social level
- Intense personal level
- Borderline pathological level
Entertainment social level
- least intense level of celebrity worship
- involves viewing celebrities as a source of entertainment and is a point of discussion between friends and family
Intense personal level
- intermediate level of celebrity worship
- involves greater personal involvement characterised by obsessive thoughts and intense feelings
- e.g. spending lots of money to follow star on world tour
Boarder pathological level
- most intense level of celebrity worship
- involves uncontrollable thoughts and extreme behavious such as spending large sums of money on objects relating to celebrity and following and behaving in line with everything celebrity says or does
- person may even attempt to meet celebrity becasue they feel celebrity will feel same way if they met in real life
Explanations for parasocial relationships
- Absorption addiction model
- Attachment theory
Absorption addiction model
- someone with a personal deficiency in their lives such as low self esteem who lacks fulfilment in their everyday relationships, is likely to use celebrities as an escape from reality when faced with a personal crisis or stressful life event
- model has 2 compenents:
1. absorption- worshipping a celebrity provides individual to focus even more attention to the celebrity and becomes obsessed
2. addiction - individual has the need to increase their dose to gain the same level of satisfaction which leads to extreme behaviours and delusional thinking such as celebrity stalking
Attachment theory
- Bowlby says attachment issues in early childhood (during critical period) leads to emotional problems as an adult and difficulties in forming successful relationships late in life
- such difficulties may lead to preference for parasocial relationships to replace those within ones own social circle as parasocial relationships dont require the same social skills
- insecure-resistant types are more likely to form parasocial relationships
- they have an emotional need for fulfilment and parasocial relationships do not carry risk of rejection/break up unlike real life relationships
- people with insecure attachments become extremely distressed at thought of seperation from those they are attached to
- crave closeness of a relationship but risk of rejection in real relationships is too high
- more likely to form parasocial relationships as risk of being abandoned is eliminated
Evalution
+ Support for absorption addiction model
+ Attachment theory is universal
- Insecure resitant types are not more likely
+ Practical value but difficult to measure
+ Support for absorption- addiction model
Maltby et al (2005)
* found there was an association between poor body image and parasocial relationships
* e.g. girls 14-16 years who held poor body image were more likely to report intense-personal parasocial relationships with a female celebrity ehose body shape they admired
* supports predictions for absorption-addiction model
+ attachment theory is universal
Dinkha et al (2005)
* compared Kuwait (collectivist culture) to US (individualist culture) and found that people with an insecure attcahment type were more likely to form a parasocial relationship with celebrities and characters from TV shows
* this was true with both cultures and acts as support for attachment theory
* shows its an universal explanation
- Insecure resistant attachments are not more likely
McCutcheon et al (2006)
* found evidence agianst attachment theory
* measured attachment types and celebrity related attitudes in 299 American participants
* found that ppts with insecure attachments were no more likely to form such relationships than ppts with secure attachments
+ Practical value but diificult to measure
- understanding thoughts and behaviours that could precede borderline pathological tendancies may help to identify those at risk before their behaviour progresses into criminality
- this can also help to develop treatments by better understanding of the causes of behaviours such as stalking
- however celebrity stalking is very complex and can have many triggers
- makes the psychology behind it difficult to understand
- Self report methods and correlational studies
- much of the research relies on self-report data which may be subject to social desirability bias as some people will not be honest affecting the reliability and validity of findings
- also, most of studies use correlational analysis
- despite strong correlations between celebrity worship and body image causal links cannot be made
