Parasocial Interactions
Parasocial interactions refer to one-sided relationships where an individual feels a connection to a persona, often a celebrity or fictional character, without any reciprocal acknowledgment from that persona. This phenomenon has gained prominence with the rise of mass media, particularly television and radio, which allow for personal engagement on a large scale. The term was first introduced in 1956 by researchers Donald Horton and R. Richard Wohl, who observed how audiences form attachments to media figures. In contemporary society, social media has further facilitated these interactions, enabling individuals to feel closer to public figures through direct communication and personal storytelling.
Parasocial relationships can manifest in various forms, including celebrity-fan dynamics and brand-consumer connections, where individuals may develop loyalty to a brand without any personal recognition from it. Researchers have categorized these relationships into different levels, reflecting the intensity of attachment, from casual admiration to more obsessive behaviors. Some studies suggest that individuals with strong parasocial relationships might be compensating for deficiencies in their real-life social interactions, which could be traced back to their early life experiences. Overall, parasocial interactions play a significant role in how individuals engage with media and can impact their social behaviors and emotional well-being.
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Parasocial Interactions
Parasocial interactions are interactions that involve a person having a one-sided relationship with someone else, real or fictional. The most famous example of a parasocial interaction is between a fan and a celebrity. The fan may watch the celebrity on television, learn about the celebrity’s life, and see the celebrity at a public event. However, the celebrity does not know the fan. Parasocial interactions and relationships are one-sided so that that only one person experiences the relationship. Parasocial interactions were first formally identified in the mid-twentieth century after the introduction of television and radio—two mediums through which people can have parasocial interactions. The internet has developed further ways for people to have parasocial interactions and relationships, including through social media. The idea of parasocial relationships is important in a number of different disciplines and fields including psychology, sociology, and marketing.
Background
Parasocial interactions began, for the most part, thanks to mass media. Radio, television, and movies—all of which developed between the end of the 1800s and the early 1900s—allowed actors, announcers, and other personas to interact with large audiences. That, in turn, allowed people in the audience to have parasocial interactions with the personalities, or personas. The term parasocial interactions was first used in 1956 by researchers Donald Horton and R. Richard Wohl. They coined the phrase parasocial interaction in their paper titled “Mass Communication and Parasocial Interaction.” Horton and Wohl pointed to television and radio personalities as examples of people with whom others have parasocial interactions. Researchers continued to build on Horton and Wohl’s theory, further describing parasocial interactions and making their own theories about why people form strong parasocial relationships.
Overview
People can have parasocial interactions with personas in the media and in other places. Parasocial interactions lead to parasocial relationships. Parasocial relationships are one-sided relationships in which one person knows a great deal about another person, or persona, and indirectly interacts with that person a great deal, usually through media. Parasocial relationships include celebrity-fan relationships, but they also include many other types of relationships. For example, a brand-consumer relationship is a parasocial relationship. People who identify with and buy particular brands can have a relationship with a brand without the brand (or the employees working for the brand) ever knowing who the individual person is. Marketing companies and other corporations take advantage of such parasocial relationships to make people feel connected to and loyal to particular brands. Parasocial relationships can also exist between fictional characters and fans. A person might read every book and learn every detail about a fictional character and develop what feels like a relationship with the character. Nevertheless, the relationship is not a real one. Parasocial relationships may also exist between an individual and another figure, such as a teacher of a large class or the CEO of a large company, who speaks to large crowds but does not have individual relationships with each person in the group.
The internet has developed further ways for people to form parasocial relationships. Social media, in particular, has created opportunities to develop parasocial interactions. Social media allows people to share intimate details of their lives, so other people can feel as though they know the personas who share their information. By the 2020s, with the proliferation of artificial intelligence (AI) in the form of large language models like ChatGPT, some experts had noted that this technology had opened up users to another kind of digital parasocial relationship.
Parasocial relationships are more likely to develop when the persona directly addresses the audience members. For example, a radio host who talks directly to the audience instead of addressing the audience as something general could make the listener feel as though the persona is talking directly to them. This personal interaction helps foster a parasocial relationship. Often, people who listen to the same radio host or watch the same television personality for many years will comment on feeling as though they know the persona or even that they feel they have a relationship with the persona. Although people who have parasocial relationships with personas might feel as though the persona is their “friend,” parasocial relationships are one-sided. These relationships are controlled by the personas, not by the people who experience the relationship.
Different levels of parasocial relationships exist. Researchers Lynn E. McCutchen and John Maltby created the celebrity attitudes scale in the early 2000s to measure some types of parasocial relationships. The scale is a tool that psychologists and other researchers use to discuss parasocial interactions and relationships. It identifies three levels of parasocial relationships: (1) the entertainment-social subscale, (2) the intense-personal subscale, and (3) the borderline-pathological subscale. The entertainment-social subscale includes traits such as learning about a celebrity’s life for entertainment. A person on this level of the scale might enjoy talking about the persona with other people who watch a particular show or enjoy a particular type of entertainment. The intense-personal subscale might include beliefs such as one that a celebrity is a person’s soulmate. A person on this level of the scale might be a member of a fan club and try to interact with a persona through staged events. The borderline-pathological subscale might involve beliefs or actions such as stalking or a willingness to cause harm on behalf of the persona. A person on this level of the scale might track a persona to their home without invitation.
Some researchers believe that people who have strong parasocial interactions and develop strong parasocial relationships are making up for deficits in their real-life relationships. Evidence shows that people who have more and stronger parasocial relationships seem to have more complicated interpersonal relationships. Some researchers have tied having strong parasocial relationships to having poor relationships as a child or young adult. Some researchers believe that being unable to have healthy close relationships as a child can impair people from having such close relationships throughout their lives. These people may be more likely to develop parasocial relationships to take the place of absent or insufficient interpersonal relationships.
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