Parasocial Relationships Flashcards
What are parasocial relationships?
One sided relationships where one person extends emotional energy, interest and time, and the other party, the persona, is completely unaware of the other’s existence. The relationships exist only in the mind of the individual, who experiences a bond despite the lack of reciprocity.
What is the celebrity attitude scale?
The Celebrity Attitude Scale (CAS) measures items within three levels of PR to find out your attitude towards your favourite celebrity.
Entertainment-social subscale – Measures items like the discussion of media personalities with friends
Intense-personal sub-scale – Measures strengths of feelings and levels of obsessions about media personalities
Borderline-pathological sub-scale – measures levels of uncontrollable feelings and behaviour about media personalities
What is the percentage in each level?
McCutcheon - 600pts. 20% in the entertainment social subscale, 10% in the intense personal subscale and 1% in the borderline pathological subscale
What is the entertainment social level?
Most people engage in PSR at some point in their lives, but most stay at the first level where celebrities are seen as a source of entertainment and as a topic for light hearted gossips with friends.
This is the least intense level of celebrity worship.
What is the intense personal level?
This is a deeper level of PR where the person has a more intense relationship with a celebrity. E.g. see them as a soulmate and they have an intense interest in the celebrity’s personal life, i.e. their dress sense, food they like, entertainment in which they take part.
This type of relationship is typical for teenagers who are obsessed with every little detail of their favourite celebrities’ lifestyle.
What is the borderline pathological level?
This is the most intense level of PR. At this level, a person takes celebrity worship to an extreme.
Has obsessive fantasies about the celebrity, spends large sums of money to obtain memorabilia & may engage in illegal activities such as stalking.
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 potentially reciprocated.
What is absorption?
Seeking fulfilment in a celebrity motivates an individual to become preoccupied and identify with them. An individual may feel dissatisfied with their life and there may be deficits in their real life r/ships so they follow and admire celebrities to fill in gaps in their lives. The individual will absorb some of the success of the celebrity to make them feel good about themselves and enable a sense of identity.
What is addiction?
There are extreme cases whereby the parasocial r/ships becomes addictive for the individual and this addictive nature means that PRs escalate through a series of stages as intensity and commitment increases. It is in these cases where criminal behaviour tends to take place. It is also in these types of r/ship whereby the individual is so distorted from reality that they may genuinely believe that they are in a r/ship with a celeb.
Who created the three levels of celebrity worship?
Giles and Maltby
PARASOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS - Research support?
Maltby et al. (2005) they found a connection between parasocial relationships and their effects on mental health.
They measured the relationship between celebrity worship and body image in teenagers. They found that teenage girls who were at the intense-personal level of celebrity worship tended to have a poor body image, especially if they particularly admired a celebrity’s physical appearance.
PARASOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS - Correlational?
This means that cause and effect cannot be clearly established, lowering the scientific explanatory power.
For example, while a significant correlation was found between poor body image and intensive celebrity worship in teenage girls (Maltby et al., 2005), this does not mean, however, that intense celebrity worship causes poor body image.
It may as well be that girls who already have a poor body image tend to engage in a more intensive level of parasocial relationships to enhance their self-esteem so this limits our understanding of the true impact of PSR on mental health.
PARASOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS - Refuting evidence?
Schiappa et al. (2007) in this meta analysis, reviewed the results of multiple studies that looked into PSR and found that these relationships could be mostly defined as normal developments or in the scope of acceptableness and in most cases, expected.
Unlike what some studies suggest about personality traits and obsessing over celebrities, no such associations exist, suggesting poor mental health is not as closely correlated to parasocial relationships as once thought.
PARASOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS - Methodological issues?
Maltby’s 2006 survey, relies heavily on self-report methods, such as interviews and questionnaires.
These methods may not reflect the true picture, as participants 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. There is often competition between fans of celebrities to see who is the ‘biggest’ fan, which may lead to an exaggeration of the behaviours and attitudes when reporting the relationship.
PARASOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS - Practical applications?
For example Maltby (2003) linked types of personality (extravert, psychotic and neurotic) to levels of parasocial relationships.
He found that extraverts were more likely to be at the entertainment-social level, neurotics at the intense-personal level and psychotics at the borderline-pathological level, supporting the absorption-addiction model.
This suggests that research into parasocial relationships can be used to improve professionals’ understanding of psychological disorders and help people struggling with psychological disorders.
