What are parasocial relationships doing to our brains?
Social media has given fans unprecedented access to celebrities and public figures, but experts say these one-sided "parasocial" relationships aren’t always unhealthy.
When pop singer Chappell Roan spoke out against the invasive fan behavior she had been experiencing since her sudden rise to popularity earlier this year—stalking, unwanted touching, invasive contact with her friends and family members—she kicked off a major discussion about the relationship between a celebrity and their audience and the downside of so-called parasocial relationships.
A parasocial relationship (PSR) is generally defined as a relationship in which one member of the relationship isn’t aware of the other—e.g., a fan loves a celebrity, but the celebrity doesn’t know they exist. Not restricted to celebrities, PSRs also exist between people and fictional characters, whether portrayed by an actor or not.
Digital media has given fans unprecedented access to celebrities. But are platforms like X (Twitter) and Instagram contributing to dangerous amounts of entitlement on the part of fans?
When makes a relationship parasocial?
The first examinations of parasocial relationships came in the 1950s, when psychologists tried to understand how television viewers reacted to the hosts, MCs, and TV personalities speaking to them directly out of the screen—a novel concept at the time. It caused concern that viewers at home wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between the relationships they had with a television personality and ones they had with “real” people— “victim[s] of the 'magic mirror'” as Richard Horton and Donald Wohl described in the 1956 paper that coined the phrase “para-social interaction.”
Later in the 70s and 80s, scholars began to hypothesize that forming parasocial relationships was driven by loneliness and isolation, and that lonelier people were more likely to form strong parasocial relationships as compensation.
However, says Gayle Stever, a professor at SUNY Empire and an expert on parasocial relationships, further research has not borne out that hypothesis. “Yes, lonely people form parasocial relationships,” she says, “but so do not-lonely people, who are just as likely to form a connection with that person on the screen.”
Stever is the author of books including The Psychology of Celebrity and the recently released Parasocial Experiences, co-written with David Giles, the latter of which uses evolutionary psychology to examine the role of parasocial attachments in society and culture.
“We as human beings have a brain that is hardwired for survival and reproduction,” she points out. If a character or celebrity brings a person a feeling of comfort, safety, and security, “[your] brain doesn't care if [you] know this person in real life or not”—it will automatically form a lasting attachment.
Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. A healthy parasocial relationship can be a source of strength, encouragement, and inspiration. Having a favorite singer, actor, or character doesn’t inherently indicate loneliness—in fact, as Stever has observed, the better connections a person has in real life, the stronger and healthier their PSRs will be.
A new type of parasocial relationship emerges online
But digital interaction complicates these natural relationships. Creators on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram actively cultivate parasocial relationships with audiences as part of their business model. Since the rise of social media, influencers have relied on a perceived authentic two-way relationship between them and their audience to ensure commercial loyalty.
But as Chappell Roan has shown, this can backfire. “When [fans] are gaining access to the celebrity through social media posts, it increases the perception of intimacy. People think they really have more of a relationship than they do,” says Mel Stanfill, a professor of digital humanities at the University of Central Florida and the author of the recently published book Fandom Is Ugly.
They point out that the phenomenon of parasocial relationships, however intrinsic to human behavior, has been immensely amplified by social media. The conventional arrangement of PSRs, where the fan or follower has no actual contact with a celebrity or creator, gets visibly disrupted by our new forums for communication—a celebrity might see a fan’s message or even reply.
“The brain processes mediated images the same way it processes images encountered in real life,” Stever says.
How parasocial relationships turn toxic
The illusion of intimacy can feel very, very real to a human brain—beginning with watching someone on a screen, and enhanced by the possibility of direct communication in a comment section.
As fandoms became more visible throughout the latter half of the 20th century, they became associated with youth and immaturity—even though many adults did and do partake in fan culture throughout their life.
But it’s true that adolescents are particularly prone to developing intense parasocial relationships, Stever says, because it can be a chance to practice real adult feelings on someone at a safe distance. Stever sees Chappell Roan’s unwanted fan interactions as a consequence of the intensity of adolescent PSRs.
“The kinds of toxic behaviors [Chappell] is describing are characteristic of adolescence,” says Stever “I'm not saying it's completely unheard of for adult fans to behave this way, but it’s pretty rare.”
Behavior that might have been limited to one person or a few people might be, thanks to social media, given the chance to spread.
Online fandoms, especially large ones full of adolescents with strong emotions can engender bad behavior among adults. You get “forms of hostility that are borne out of an online community where people are egging each other on,” Stanfill says. “When you interact with everything through your phone, the fact that there's a human being on the other end can often get lost. There's a disinhibition of it all; there's a sort of filter bubble, or echo chamber effect where people convince themselves, ‘everyone agrees with me and therefore we are [all] righteous in our approach.’”
So a parasocial relationship that starts with healthy boundaries, can turn sour when a mob mentality forms, resulting in harassment.
“[Bad actors in fandoms] are more visible than they ever were. They are more able to coordinate with each other. And so they are louder, even though they're only a small slice of the [fandom] population,” Stanfill explained.
Parasocial relationships are natural and not inherently unhealthy. But, as Stever says, “Anything that can be true about a regular social relationship can be true about a parasocial relationship. Are they positive? Can they be good for us? Absolutely. Can they be negative? Can they be toxic for us? We all know examples of that.”
