Parasocial Relationships Flashcards
Who developed the Celebrity attitude scale?
Lynn Muctcheon
What is the celebrity attitude scale (CAS) ?
It was used in a large-scale survey by John Maltby who identified three levels of parasocial relationship.
Each level describers the attitudes and behaviours linked to ever more extreme forms of celebrity worship.
What were the three levels of parasocial relationship found by John Maltby?
Entertainment-social- This is the least intense level of celebrity worship. At this level celebrities are viewed as sources of entertainment and fuel for social interaction.
Intense-personal- This is an intermediate level which reflects a greater personal involvement in a parasocial relationship with a celebrity.
Borderline-pathological- This is the strongest level o celebrity worship, featuring uncontrollable fantasies and extreme behaviours.
What is a parasocial relationship?
They are a one-sided, unreciprocated relationship, usually with a celebrity, on which the fan sends a lot of emotional energy, commitment and time.
Who came up with the absorption addiction model?
Lynn McCutcheon
What is the absorption model?
McCutcheon linked the levels of approach to the deficiences people have in their own lives.
It has two components:
Absorption- Seeking fulfilment in celebrity worship motivates an individual to focus their attention as far as possible on the celebrity, to become preoccupied with the celebrity and identify with them.
Addiction- the individual needs to increase their dose in order to gain satisfaction. This may lead to more extreme behaviours and delusional thinking.
How has attachment theory explained parasocial relationships?
Various psychologists have suggested that there is a tendency to form parasocial relationships in adolescence and adulthood because of attachment difficullties in early childhood.
Bowlby’s attachment theory suggested that early childhood difficulties may lead to emotional troubles later in life.
Mary Ainsoworth identified two attachment types associated with unhealthy emotional development: Insecure-resistant and Insecure-avoidant.
Insecure-resistant types are most likely to form parasocial relationships as adults.
Insecure-avoidant types prefer to avoid the pain and rejection of relationships altogether, whether they be social or parasocial.
Evaluation: Research support for levels of parasocial relationships.
McCutcheon used the CAS to messure level of parasocial relationships. They also assesses participants’ problems in their intimate relationships. participants who scored as borderline-pathological or intense-personal tended to experience a high degree of anxiety in their intimate relationships. people at the entertainment-social level generally did not.
This suggests that ‘celebrity worshippers’ can usefully be classified into three categories and that these are predictive of actual behaviour.
Evaluation: Support for absorption addiction model
One strength of the model is research showing a link between celebrity worship and body image.
The addiction-absorption model suggests that a deficiency in a person’s life would predispose them to forming parasocial relationships.
John Maltby assessed boys and girls aged 14-16. The researchers were particularly interested in girls who reported an intense-personal parasocial relationship with an adult female celebrity whose body shape they admired. They found that the girls tended to have poor body image. They speculated that this may contribute to the development of an eating disorder.
This supports that model’s prediction of an association between poor psychological functioning and the level of parasocial relationship.
Evaluation: Universal tendency-n explains why people have a desire to form parasocial relationships universally.
Juliet Dinkha compared two contracting cultures (individualistic/ collectivist).
The researchers found that people with an insecure attachment type were the most likely to form intense parsocial relationships with celebrities. This was true in both cultures.
This supports the view that attachment type may be a universal explanation for the need to form parasocial relationships.
