Parasocial Relationships Essay

Parasocial relationships are one-sided friendships that are formed in which one person is acknowledged, but the other person is unaware of the other’s existence. Some people develop these relationships to compensate for the lack of activity in their social lives, and other form these bonds because of pure admiration or respect. Regardless of the reason, parasocial relationships can be formed by people of all ages- from infants to adults- and are motivated by the increasing use of technology.

Before taking this class, I thought that parasocial relationships could only be formed with people that exist in real life. I assumed that it was impossible to develop a personal connection with an inanimate object or fictional character. After taking

They hypothesized that parasocial relationships offer low self-esteem people an opportunity to feel closer to their ideal selves. Through the Rosenberg test, Undergraduate psychology students aged 19- 22 were evaluated in their level of self-esteem. Then, they were asked to identify their favorite celebrity and if they felt closest to celebrities who were similar to their ideal self. They found that greater similarity between the celebrity and their ideal self was associated with lower self-esteem.

A weakness in this research was that it only focused on parasocial relationships with celebrities. It didn’t address the possibility of having parasocial relationships with a fictional character and didn’t consider how those would affect self-esteem. A strength was that participants completed the Rosenberg test in order to determine their level of self-esteem. Doing so gave researchers an unbiased method to measure each participant's

The study consisted of a significant number of females compared to males, which makes it invalid to conclude that the findings support the general population. A strength was that participants were selected at random. By doing so, the study remained unbiased, thus making the results more credible.

This study examined how social media affects parasocial relationships. The findings demonstrated how technology in the form of social media helps users feel connected to a celebrity, especially if they are constantly seeing them in the media. In consequences consequence, a parasocial relationship is formed through admiration and