Parasocial relationships: levels of parasocial relationships, the…

The idea

A parasocial relationship is one sided: the fan knows the celebrity intimately and the celebrity does not know the fan exists, so there is no risk of rejection. Maltby's work with the Celebrity Attitude Scale gives three levels, and they are levels of intensity rather than stages everyone passes through. Entertainment social is ordinary fandom and gossip, intense personal involves obsessive thoughts and feelings of a soulmate bond and correlates with anxiety and depression, and borderline pathological involves fantasies of control and willingness to spend money or break the law. McCutcheon's absorption addiction model says such relationships fill a deficient sense of self: absorption is preoccupation with the figure, addiction is needing stronger doses to sustain the feeling. The attachment explanation predicts insecure resistant adults form them most readily.

What earns the marks

• Parasocial relationship defined as one sided, unreciprocated and with no risk of rejection.
• The three levels named and described in order of intensity, with the Celebrity Attitude Scale as the measure.
• Intense personal linked to poorer mental health, borderline pathological linked to fantasy and illegal behaviour.
• Absorption addiction explained as compensation for a deficient identity, with absorption and addiction defined separately.
• Attachment explanation linked to Bowlby's internal working model, with insecure resistant most likely and insecure avoidant least likely.
• AO3: the evidence is correlational and self report, so a weak identity may follow the parasocial relationship rather than cause it.
• AO3: McCutcheon and colleagues found no relationship between attachment type and the likelihood of a parasocial relationship, which undermines the attachment account.
• AO3: Schmid and Klimmt found similar levels of parasocial attachment to Harry Potter in individualist and collectivist cultures, suggesting a universal process.

Common mistakes and how to put them right

• Treating the three levels as developmental stages.

  Put it right: They are degrees of intensity, and most fans never move beyond entertainment social.

• Describing absorption and addiction as one idea.

  Put it right: Absorption is preoccupation and identification, addiction is escalation to keep the same effect.

• Naming the wrong attachment type.

  Put it right: It is insecure resistant, not insecure avoidant, who seek the unfulfilled closeness a celebrity can safely provide.

• Presenting parasocial relationships as automatically unhealthy, when entertainment social attachment is normal and sociable.

Exam tips

• Use the level names as your structure in a description question, then use their measurement by questionnaire as the way into evaluation.
• For an application item, match the described behaviour to a level and justify the match with the behaviour itself, such as travelling across the country to wait outside a hotel.
• Keep a methodological criticism ready: the Celebrity Attitude Scale is self report, so social desirability suppresses the borderline pathological answers.