Instant Genius - Why we form one-sided 'parasocial' relationships with celebrities

Episode Date: August 11, 2024

It is easy to feel like we know celebrities, and even love them. But these people don’t know who we are, so is it healthy? We spoke to Karen Shackleford, a media psychologist to better understand the one-sided world of parasocial relationships. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Known as parasycial relationships, these are one-sided, but incredibly common, So are they healthy? Why do we have them? And are they changing in an ever-digital world? We spoke to Karen Shackleford, a media psychologist and editor-in-chief of Psychology of Popular Media to find out more. So the term parasocial relationships, you know, it gets thrown around a lot. You hear it a lot, especially online. Could you outline what we're actually talking about here? What is meant by it? Yes. So people are confused. some terms that are adjacent to each other. But I think the easiest way to think about a parasycial relationship is that it's like a friendship, that you feel that a character in a television show,

for example, or an actor is your friend. Some of the criticisms of the concept of having a parasycial relationship is that you have lost your mind and you think this person is actually your friend. Most of the TV that I watch is British, so I'll pick some British people let's say I'm watching QI and I think that Sandy Toswig is my friend. That doesn't mean I think she comes over to my house for tea. That means I think she feels like a friend to me. She's very comfortable with her. I like her.

I think that if she and I did have tea, that she would like me. But I haven't lost my mind and I don't think she knows me or things like that. So that's her social relationship. It's defined as a one-sided relationship because I know her. she doesn't know me, but the feelings I have for her as if we did meet and have tea occasionally. So it's based on more the idea that you form in your head of them or the way that they present themselves, I guess. So I think it's all very natural. Like I mentioned, people sometimes criticize a person thinking that, let's say, I'll switch to an American example. So I have a crush

on 1960s William Shatner, you know, Captain Kirk. If I have a crush, I have a crush on him. I think he's handsome, et cetera. But I don't go to his home and stand in the shrubbery and I don't think that he knows me or that we will be married soon. So there are people who do that. My clinical colleagues tell me, yes, there are people, of course, who stalk people or who have this impression or you'll even see it online. I was doing some research lately for a paper, and someone was talking about Justin Bieber and who he was in a relationship with or married to. And these fans were saying, why would he be in a relationship with her? Doesn't he know that we're meant to be together?

You know, things like that. So I would call that the clinical side where the person has crossed over and now they've lost touch with reality. But most of us feel attracted to stars or characters. And the word attracted and social psych means drawn to. So whether it's romantic or whether it's in friendship ways, we feel like. that person is an old friend. And that's one of the reasons. If you've watched something for many years and you turn it on, that kind of triggers your nostalgia. And nostalgia is that warm, fuzzy feeling. It's sort of like the feeling of going home again. And so if you watch a presenter like that,

you feel like you're going home again when you see them. So it's like their family or it's like their friends. So even though they don't know you, even though you might meet them at some point, it's not a one-on-one relationship, it's a one-sided relationship. But there is another side in that the star, the figure, they might love their fans or feel warmth toward their fans in general. They might interact with some fans. So it's not entirely one-sided, but it is mostly one-sided. It's mostly one-sided feelings.

But people that are forming these one-sided relationship, it is a healthy thing until it ventures over into, you know, as you say, the hiding in bushes sort of, area. Until then, it's healthy. Yes, in fact, it's the most normal thing that you can think of, because I think we have to go back to how were our brains constructed in the first place. So, we're designed, if you will, to have relationships one-on-one. And in the past, you would never meet more than, say, 140 people in your lifetime. So everyone was someone that you saw face-to-face. We weren't wired to understand these distance relationships, but now we spend sometimes more time with those people than we spend with the people that we know physically and face-to-face.

And so we're wired to connect. That's the title of a book by Matthew Lieberman's social, why we are wired to connect. We are wired to connect because being social is one of the most crucial things, if not the most crucial thing for our survival and our happiness. And so our brains and our emotions, we are doing what we're supposed to do when we feel those feelings for other people. it's not that we are sad or we don't have our own friends, it's that we have the natural process of connecting with someone else, and we do that even from a distance.

And so a person should never feel strange about having feelings, feeling like someone is our friend. For instance, if you ask me, who would I most like to have dinner with, someone who's well-known? I might pick Stephen Colbert, the host of comedy political shows or Barack Obama. I've actually seen Barack Obama face-to-face, but he's not my personal friend. Barack call me. But I have seen him. And I can talk more about that, why, how we form those bonds. But he's real.

I'm real. I've seen him. And I think that I would really like him and Michelle as well. We're connecting like we would connect to someone face-to-face. And that's the most normal thing in the world. It's not strange. And almost all of us do it. I have data.

Almost all of us connect in that way to others. And there's often these discussions about how we're in quite like a lonely generation. A lot of people are quite lonely. Is this almost not a coping mechanism, but a way that people that don't see many people can feel that kind of relationship in their life? Yes. And in fact, please use the term coping mechanism. I think I have a paper that's about to be published that does.

So we did a study myself and Josh Cohen and Perry Reid about what people watched and what they rewatched or repeat. watched during the pandemic. So talking about loneliness, we were isolated. Everyone was isolated, of course, during the pandemic. And what we found is that people repeat watched in our study, they watched things they'd already seen more than they watched new things. So people have a motive for familiarity. We like familiarity. And people have a motive for novelty. So we do seek out new experiences and we also seek out the familiar ones, which ones we do more. of, well, there's individual differences in that.

Some people love doing new things. They always order something new on the menu at the restaurant. They try to do novel things. And some people love to stay in their comfort zone. They love to have familiar experiences. But it's an almost universal thing. It's more than 90% of people repeatedly watch the same show. And in our data, what they watched during the pandemic,

they watched Friends, Seinfeld, and the office. And then the rest of the shows in our top 10, they watch things like CSI and its various versions are NCIS prime dramas. And so we had a hypothesis that they were liking to watch mysteries that got resolved or bad things that got resolved because there was not a resolution that we could personally make happen in the pandemic. And so we like to watch other people take care of a situation and make it all come out right. But in terms of the comedies and just repeatedly watching either a franchise or a genre or the specific show, what we think is that we had a desire for the familiar. And part of that familiarity is they're like our friends. So Jerry Seinfeld, the cast from the office, a cast from friends, they are our friends from the screen.

And so we like to watch them interact with each other. It does actually combat loneliness. Sarah Gabriel and her colleagues have done multiple studies. She's probably the central person in this area where she posits that we use that screen contact as one of the ways of fulfilling our social needs, the need to belong, the needs that friendship fills. And so the friends are our friends. They are someone who makes us feel like we belong, like we're in a group. It triggers all those feelings. And so again, I like to draw the line where I think it goes. And that is that most of us use mediated stories, film, television, podcasts, video games to connect to other people. And that's

legitimate. Where it would be problematic is where it crosses the line in the other direction where we don't move the house. We don't have other people we talk to. We don't have solid social support and friendship in our life because we've just stopped doing that. A lot of people have real life friends, real life family, real life social support. But you're right, you know, both in the UK, I think you guys have announced, like we have announced through Vivic Murthy, our surgeon general, has pointed the focus on loneliness and called loneliness a real health issue, a top health issue. And I'm sure there's lots of reasons for that, which we could go into, such as people growing older who don't have as many people to support them.

So it's a balance. It's a balance between allowing yourself the comfort of the friends that you see on the screen, but also knowing if you can at all, you want to build those face-to-face social connections for all the reasons we know. I joke as I get older. I don't care what my friend does. I just need them to drive me to the hospital if I need it. Like when you're young, you're like, who's fun?

And I'm like, who can drive me to the hospital? But, you know, so of course we need each other. That's, like I say, in Matthew Lieberman's book, or of course my whole training is a social psychologist. We need each other. We drive each other crazy sometimes, but we absolutely need social support, friends. It's at the end of our days, we will say, what was my life about? And we will think of our children, our spouses, our family, our friends, and those social connections will be important for our survival and thriving. And they'll be the thing that we said was the most important thing of our life. Of course.

And I mean, we've spoken a lot about celebrities that, you know, you see on screen, the TV stars, movie stars, things like that. A lot of people tend to feel this sort of way about, I guess, you know, influences or people that have quite large internet presence. Where, you know, you're seeing every bit of their life and, you know, you're seeing them day to day, the behind the scenes, the things they're doing. Does that, I guess, increase that way? you basically do feel like you fully know them because you see every second of their life.

That is interesting. So that's not my central focus, but I will say that it's any kind of quote unquote reality or any kind of thing where you're seeing more information about them. I think it would increase the realism for you. For example, I mentioned that I really love Stephen Colbert. And for any celebrity connection, I think I would love to sit with Stephen Colbert, have a coffee and have him laugh at any of my jokes. that would be just fantastic.

But I remember during the pandemic, he moved to his house. And then he also had his wife who was there with him. Some of his kids, I think, helped with the tech. And so you could see his house. You could see him talking to his wife. He was dressing more casually. So it's kind of a parallel to the influencers. Sorry, I'm not following like what the Kardashians or whoever is doing.

That's more my kids era. But, yeah, you're seeing their home, other people who walk through it, the way they talk in that environment. It's not scripted. And so that makes you feel that, yes, you know what's happening in that life. And so, yeah, I would increase that connection. And also the back and forth aspect that sometimes with influencers, they respond to tweets and other things. And so there is some back and forth or there's questions that they take from people, oh, someone asks me this and I'm going to respond to that. So it's a bit more interactive. It's a bit more that they're talking to you are other people like you.

So yeah, I can see that that would, like I say, it's not my main area, but those types of things make you feel that you're seeing more of a whole person and you have more access to their actual life and the way they speak rather than say it for an actor being scripted in the role. Ambition comes in all shapes and sizes. At First Citizens Bank, we roll with your goals because we're built for what you're building. fit for your ambition for citizens back this podcast is sponsored by name audio and focal with over a hundred years of combined expertise name and focal have been bringing music to listeners just as the artist intended since day one this mantra has shaped every innovation in high-fi design technology and acoustic engineering balancing craftsmanship and tradition with pioneering thinking name audio pushing

is cutting-edge technology to ensure digital precision whilst sustaining Pratt, pace, rhythm and timing, the elusive quality that makes music feel alive and gives it emotional texture. Today, in partnership with French acoustic specialist's focal, name audio creates systems that deliver exceptional sound and unforgettable listening experiences at home. Try it for yourself at a focal powered by name boutique. Visit focal powered by name.com for more information. We're, I guess, in the grand scheme of things, quite early on into the world of this idea of parisocial relationship.

Is there any, I guess, long-term research about people that do form quite a reliance on them or where people might have a particular feeling of a relationship with one celebrity and how that sort of goes on a long-term basis? So, believe it or not, there is over 60 years of research on parisocial relationships. It started in 1956 with Horton and Wall, and there's an article which summarizes that, which Lieber's and Schram wrote in it says, here are 60 years of parisocial relationships work. I'm actually thrilled that the term parasycial relationships is now more of an everyday term. I think it was one of the top eight words considered for the Oxford English Dictionary, a word

of the year this past year. The question that you asked, I don't think that we have the data on that, but it actually ties into what I was relating about our research. on repeatedly watching because my colleagues and I, Josh Cohen, this is his main area of research and he's doing a dissertation on the subject. We had that conversation about, we measure parasycial relationships in the research a lot as one moment in time. But one thing that we wanted to know more about is what if you have like a decades long relationship with a certain person? And that takes on a whole other emotional tone and sense of depth. So I'll use Dr. Who for this example. even though the actor changes over time, what was it, 1963, when it started and then it restarted in 2005.

So there are decades of following the story. And just like people watch NCIS or CSI, it's the story in the format, even though the actor or actress in Jody's case changes. Back to my example with William Shatner, Captain Kirk, that started in the 60s. So I have had an opportunity to see him from the 60s, you know, in all these different decades. Now he's 90. He went into space for real. That's a good, actually, example of this line between fantasy and reality. So we like to say, oh, I understand. He's not really Captain Kirk.

There's no, you know, Captain Kirk that exists. And yet William Shatner went into space for free, you know, because Elon Musk thinks he's Captain Kirk. Again, he doesn't think he is, I don't know. I haven't interviewed him, but let's say he knows he's an actor. Why said William Shatner into space? He's not an astronaut, right? but he's Captain Kirk.

And so that had a real effect on his life. And of course, Elon Musk did that because he loved Star Trek and because other people went to cover this story that a space traveler went into space. When we know, quote unquote, that he's an actor, not a space traveler, what I'm getting at is you have a relationship with a person over time. And in the case of William Chattner, he's been Denny Crane on Boston Legal. he's been T.J. Hooker, he's been all these different characters over time. And my husband once took me as a treat to see a show that William Shatner did where he was in an auditorium full of people. And the thing, you know, I always joke that I'm in love with him. And I like the scenes where his shirt is torn off and everything. But really, I have a fondness for him. That's the actual truth. And when I went into that auditorium and I saw him in person, the thing that just kind of flooded over me emotionally was hearing his voice.

because he has that famous voice, that voice I've heard since I wasn't there in that early 1960s, but he has that voice that I know and that personality that I know. And I felt flooded with emotions for that like he was my uncle. Like I was seeing this person that I followed and that I've gotten to know what his actual William Chattner's personality is over time, the funny things about him, the fact that he was, you know, egotistical over he was jealous of Mr. Spock when he was young and he's admitted that over the years, but he's, I love that he's actually funny. He's very, he'd make me laugh a lot. So it's that continuity there. So I've maintained, I will say, my sane parisocial relationship

with William Chattner. It's not that I, over the years have decided I need to stop him or something. I have the same normal, regular level of affection for him that a fan would have. But I have the intensity of that, for me, for him, the warmth over time that here's a voice that I've heard. heard for so long. I've seen for so long. I know what he looked like when he was in his 20s and 30s, and now he's in his 90s. It's like that. For me, it's the warm, fuzzy feeling you have for your actual uncles or something. I do want to say, on top of all that, of course, and no shade test on my own uncles, so I have tons of them. I have a huge family. All uncles, I love you. Unlike people in our everyday lives, our neighbors and such, the people we see on the screen,

they're all extraordinary. Like, they're extraordinary in their looks. They're usually extraordinary in their charm. And they're also curated in such a way that we normally see all their good sides. They're given scripts that make them sound like they're saving the world in William Chattner's case. And so of course we're very attracted to them. Everything about them says be attracted to me, right? And so of course we have an intensity of feelings for them. It's not that we prefer people who aren't there. It's just that our brains, you know, again, we're wired to connect. We're also wired to relate in many different ways. And if you see someone, I often think, why do people watch the cardizing? Well, because they're intensely beautiful, right? So, of course,

you want to stare at them. It's the reason I want to stare at Chris Hemsworth, right? What? They can't be real. You know, it's not that people are more likely over time, as far as we know now, to lose connections with reality. It's that that's connection over time. Again, going back to nostalgia, that person we feel very nostalgic about because someone we've had in our life for that long of a period of time and they haven't been ousted or anything, we have a strong connection to them. It's stronger than anything that could just be built in a few weeks or months. We've watched their whole lives in and out of different roles and we've seen them in different situations. And that's a stability that for us is so rewarding.

You can't really replace that with anything else. And that's why Josh Cohen and I, Perry Reid, and our colleagues were so interested in continuing to look at those relationships that we've had with a parissocial relationships over the long term. Is there, I guess, any indication of what happens when one of these kind of relationships ends if, you know, for example, a TV star finishes their career, they retire, or they have a scandal or, you know, something like this where you just lose that connection and it cuts off. Yes, there's actually some good research on both of those things. So they call it parisocial breakup, even if it's not a romance. So when a show ends, people are very sad. And it's, it could be a show, Harry Potter, the end of the Harry Potter series,

a series of films. It could be the show Friends ending. You want more of that story. And so you're sad because you're not going to see any new situations there. You're not going to continue to track them. So like I say, it's called parasycial breakup, whether the show ends, whether the person dies, not that you can't continue to watch the shows or read the books if someone passes away, but there's a severing of that connection. I've told my husband, he knows, if Paul McCartney passes away, I need you to sit me down, right? Because I'm like, I don't want to hear this announced on social media, you know, I want you to break to me gently because, of course, me like many screaming people from the 60s. I love Paul McCartney and I do, you know,

love him as a musician and I've heard him interviewed. And so again, it's a parasycial relationship. And so the breakup leads to the feelings of a breakup like someone has left you. This is over. I didn't get to decide it. They broke up with you. Also, the other part where the breakup is caused by something that the person does. That happens. with a fair amount of frequency, and researchers have studied that kind of incongruity, where we think a person is one way on the screen, and then we learn something terrible. And it's not unlike with politicians or other things. I've taught about the history of psychology, and I will say, okay, we can learn about Carl Jung,

but then Carl Jung was anti-Semitic, that he had a mistress, then he pushed down the staircase. And so I asked my students, should we not study any scientific contributions of Carl Jung? Or should we put that aside? And students will say, well, we should take advantage of the knowledge that he built up, but understand that he was very flawed. But you could take that to Wagner. You could take that to any number of people who have heinous acts associated with them, but also created art or science that was valuable.

we have to grapple with that cognitive dissonance for them as well. Because, as you said, you know, this term has become far more frequent recently. It's seen a lot more. What do you think is the influence we're going to see of that in the next couple of years? Do you think it's just people understand it more or there'll be more research in it? I think definitely the research is ongoing. You know, I'm passionate about my research in parisocial relationships. For example, we just did a study about forming a parasycial relationship.

relationship with a couple. We did Jim and Pam from the office and the idea of the relationship there is, we argue, following a romance. And it's not specifically, although we like Jim and Pam in the office, whether it was the characters on the British one or the American version. The couple was central in that story. And so we were rooting for the couple to get together. And it was the couplehood specifically that we had an attachment to the outcomes of, even though we liked each of those two characters, it wasn't primarily about them. It was primarily about cheering a relationship on. There are many aspects of parisocial relationships and other ways that we connect to characters that is really ripe for research. Another way that we normally talk about that we connect

with characters, we call identification. And that doesn't mean I think I'm similar to them. It means I feel what they're feeling in the moment. And so we glide. through a series of different perspectives on characters, including thinking they're a friend and including feeling as if what's happening to them is happening to me. And so there's so much more research that needs to be done in that area. Also, I'm an enthusiastic fan of us understanding what it is that our pop culture contributes or what it costs us. And so I usually go on the well-being side and what it contributes side, for my own research. But I think that it's fascinating that we spend so much of our waking lives when we have a choice to connect to pop culture.

Don't chastise yourself or don't be shy about admitting that, of course, we're interested in these beautiful people and the characters that they portray. But yes, always keep that in mind that, you know, if you think there's any chance that you're crossing online, you want to be careful. For example, parents will ask me sometimes my child really likes Katie Perry or whoever it is. Is it too much? Are they dressing like the person? Or they seem to be completely into the YouTube channel or the YouTuber or whoever it is? Yeah, I think you can ask yourself, for sure, is it too much? Is it interrupting their forming friendships with other people? Are they spending what you think is too much time connecting with the media figures and not enough time going out there and meeting people? So yeah,

legitimate. I tease about it because I think people might jump to that conclusion that anytime you like an actor, something's done horribly wrong with your mental health. That's not true. But yeah, especially, of course, for our kids and teens and everything, they're vulnerable. I have a 19-year-old and a 23-year-old, my 19-year-old, she went to high school during the pandemic. I went with her for part of that time. And so it's different than when we grew up. And their people that they're following are also different. You know, both my kids, they watched YouTube videos and they watched influencers and YouTubers, much more than they watched television series or things like that. And so sometimes the parents are concerned, too,

because they don't do those things. So they don't even know, who are these YouTubers? What do they do? Why are they watching them? You know, things like that. So when there's kind of a generation gap and we don't understand our own kids' media, for instance, or your partner's media, you're wondering they're playing video games too often, who are the people that they're meeting when they play the video games. Is that a parissocial relationship or is it real? You know, is it one-sided? Is it two-sided? So there are multiple ways that we connect in modern times with different people who we meet at a distance. And so it is very legitimate to be concerned about those things. And it's like anything, I'm not a therapist, but, you know, if it's interrupting your life, if it's

interrupting your thriving, then it's a concern. Thank you for listening to this episode. episode of Instant Genius. That was Karen Shackleford talking about parisocial relationships. The Instant Genius podcast is brought to you by the team behind BBC Science Focus magazine, which you can find on sale now in supermarkets and newsagents, as well as on your preferred app store. Alternatively, you can come and find us online at sciencefocus.com. This podcast is sponsored by name, audio and focal. The texture and emotional depth of music, can be lost through digital sources or poor signal. Name Audio believes you can have digital precision with analogue warmth.

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